Still Walking La Frontera

Patrol Night 2 or I Have Turtle Blood on My Hands

2010-06-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

June 22, 2010

Tonight I am on the beach writing by the gibbous moonlight. The Atlantic is beating a persistent time, the stars sparkle, the fireflies twinkle, the palm trees are silhouetted against the midnight blue sky, and the sand looks like gray moon dust in the moonlight. The breeze from off the water is blowing on my face as we sit on a washed up log in the center of our zone, the lights from the oil rigs glow ever so faintly on the horizon. I am at peace. There is a spaciousness here that reminds me how incomprehensibly massive the universe is, how I am only a tiny but precious part of it, just like the turtles.

When you see one coming out of the surf, her black shell glistening like an enormous black beetle, like some otherworldly dinosaur, like a phantom of the ocean, it is ghostly, surreal, haunting. We are still waiting for our first of the night.

I mentioned body pitting earlier but I will explain this ritual in more detail. After she heaves herself onto shore, pulling her massive body with her front flippers, pushing with her rear flippers, and finds "the spot" in the softer sand above the high water line, she begins the pit. She uses her front flippers like wings and makes, well, a snow angel, but in the sand, and in the shape of a turtle - a turtle angel I suppose. She does this to build up sand along her sides, creating a pit to balance herself over the egg chamber she will soon dig. She uses the build up of sand to anchor herself over the egg chamber by her front flippers. Brilliant.

I am hoping for a quiet night where I can just sit with one turtle from start to finish, no lights, no tagging, no data recording. Just sit with her and watch her in wonder. The data gathering is certainly interesting, and I am concerned with accuracy, but when you are so focused on the data, you are not focused on the wonder. It reminds me of the William Wordsworth poem, The Tables Turned.

THE TABLES TURNED

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet, 10
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness. 20

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:--
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves; 30
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

"Sweet is the lore which nature brings/our meddling intellect/mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things/we murder to dissect." How perfectly these lines capture the process of intellectual deconstruction. Certainly we gain an understanding of one sort by studying, measuring, solving, but we miss another kind of understanding all together, the one that involves just being, the one that involves the Limitlessness of life.

I want to just be with a turtle. But tonight is not my night. I have done my first PIT tagging. When our first turtle finally arrived, we prepared our equipment, waited. She took a long time to dig. Stephan joked, "Can you tell her to come on?" "Typical man," I said, "you can't rush these things. Perfection takes time." We can only tag her when she is laying. This is because she is in a trance of sorts, concentrating so hard on the laying that you really cannot spook her. I loaded the tag gun with the needle, knelt in front of her, massaged the meaty shoulder with my thumb, and pushed the needle in. Her shoulder was thick; I pushed the trigger forward, inserting the tag, and pulled the gun out, leaving my finger over the wound. That's when I felt it, blood. Oh God! Did I do it wrong? She's bleeding! Did I hurt her? No, not really. I forgot to put my thumb right on the spot before I withdrew the needle. A minor error in technique, but it did not hurt her. But now I have turtle blood on my hands, quite literally.

All of the tagging and measuring and GPSing and scanning and examinining means that you are lying, kneeling, sitting, leaning, balancing, hovering, etc. in sand. Sand sand sand. I have sand everywhere. Under my finger nails, in my nose (I got a flipper full in my face), in my ears, behind my ears, in my hair, in my belly button. I have sand in every crevice. I have sand in crevices I didn't know I had. And yes, I have sand in that crevice too, front and back. Yay.

Day 4 or It Ain't Easy Being Green

2010-06-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

June 22, 2010

Today we spent the morning and afternoon, between naps and meals, in training. Nature Seekers figured that what we are doing would make more sense after we have seen it in action on the beach one night, and they are right.

So here's the scoop on Nature Seekers: The group was started by a local woman named Suzan Lakhan Baptiste, also known as "the Crazy Turtle Lady," (last year she won a CNN Hero Award for her work). She realized the importance of the turtles, she realized they were endangered. In the 1970's and 1980's 30% of turtles were killed for meat, shells, and well, hey, why not? The hatchlings were used for bait by fishermen, eggs were poached, the necks of the adults were hacked to allow the blood to run in the surf and attract sharks to the beach for shark fishermen. Hawksbill and Green turtles (two other species that also nest here, but are even more rare than the leatherbacks) were killed for their hard shells to make jewelry (today it is illegal to transport turtle jewelry out of the country). Even today there is still an open season on Leatherbacks (Nature Seekers is trying to get the newly elected government to reverse this - there is a Facebook campaign: Trinidad & Tobago Leatherback Project). But the biggest threat is bycatch. NS estimates that 1,000 turtles per year are caught in fishing nets, and they are working to test other fishing methods and convince local fishermen that these other methods are kinder to the turtles and are actually more efficient at catching the intended fish. It is an uphill battle to change attitudes. Occasionally a baby will be a snack for crabs or hawks. They don't fuss about that too much - Circle of Life and all.

So Nature Seekers is unusual in that it is an organization of locals protecting their own wildlife. The guides are locals, the research is conducted and compiled by locals, the tourism is conducted by the locals. They are trying to build a model for local conservation that can be copied elsewhere in the world. An admirable goal. This model is different than the model that requires an outsider to come in and steamroll the local population's needs in various conservation efforts.

It's not easy being a turtle in the ocean. But the research has given them a good idea where the turtles are going. Many of them ride the ocean currents up to Nova Scotia. One was found in New York, one in North Carolina, one in Florida. And yet they return, for the most part, to the same beaches every 2-3 years to nest. Although there are exceptions. Trinidad turtles have nested in Tobago and Costa Rica, which has given rise to the local expression: "Don't put all your eggs on one beach."

As an alternative to the turtle shell jewelry, the local male guides are experimenting with turning the glass bottles collected on the beach into glass beads to make jewelry and sell. And after they work nights patrolling the beach, the men head out with machetes into the jungle during the day to help with a reforestation project. They are replanting local vegetation and fruit trees in the hopes that wildlife will return (the monkeys are almost gone).

The second part of the lecture, Ronald, one of the spunkier guides, talked to us again about how to approach working our beach zones. We learned how to prioritize turtles - returning nesters versus new nesters (tag the new turtles first), how to prioritze timing (a turtle who is just coming ashore may have another 40 minutes before she starts laying, so you have time to patrol the shore looking for others. We learned how to use our GPS to get the precise coordinates of the egg chamber, how to measure properly, how to record all the data: everything from the weather, the time, date, the turtle's activities, the flipper damage, parasites on the turtle, injuries, identifying abnormalities, etc. My head was spinning, but the task for me is nothing compared to what these turtles go through, or the hatchlings for that matter. These animals are very, very determined to continue their species, and I will do what I need to to help them.

Go check out www.natureseekers.org. Send them money if you have some to spare!

Night 1 or I Am Not a Turtle Virgin

2010-06-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

June 21, 2010 - first night on the beach

Tonight we piled into the paddywagon at seven with all of our gear: long shirts, long pants, hiking shoes, head lamps, mosquito repellant, water, rain gear, etc...

The twenty minute ride through the jungle to the beach is different in the dark, when unfamiliar sounds from frogs and other night dwellers fill the air.

When we arrived at the base shelter on the beach, Ronald, our guide and trainer for the evening, showed us the tagging instruments. The first and most critical is the PIT tag, which gets injected into the turtle's meaty shoulder like a pet microchip. The PIT tags allow the researchers to see if a turtle is returning to the same beach every 2-3 years when she nests. One of ours has ended up in Florida before.

The other kind of tag is the flipper tags. These are a little mean looking, and I cringed at the thought of putting them on the sweet giants. They are metal tags which bite into the fleshy area between the tail and the back flipper when you clamp them with a rather medieval looking metal clamp. It's like a livestock tag in the ear. It pierces the flesh and contains an ID number and the address of Nature Seekers here in Trinidad. It's like tagging the webbed skin between your fingers. OUCH! But they do provide information. Three of our turtles ended up in fishing nets in the Mediterranean. The fishermen had the presence of mind to report it and let at least one of them go. It took a year for the information to get back to Nature Seekers and when they finally got the information on the sighting, the same turtle was back on Matura Beach nesting that year.

We can only tag her when she is actually laying the eggs, not during any other part of her elaborate nesting ritual. And in addition to the tags, we are outfitted with scanners (for scanning for earlier PIT tags), GPS, measuring tape for measuring the carapace (shell), record sheets and pencils.

All during the 45 minute talk, my anticipation was mounting. We were all chomping to get on the beach, behold our first turtle. Finally we turned down the sandy path to the shoreline, turning our head lamps off. The night air was still and dense, and there was no relieving breeze on the beach either. We turned parallel to the shore and began our patrol and there she was! A huge, primeval, ancient dinosaur, an enormous black mound in the sand. A thrill of child wonder ran through me. She was already deep into her ritual.

She uses her front flippers to do what is called "body pitting." She clears away the surface sand and sinks her belly further into the sand below, feeling for temperature (cooler temperatures mean more male hatchlings, warmer sand yields more female hatchlings). She is deciding if she likes the spot she's chosen. If she doesn't, she'll move around until she finds one more to her liking. If that does not work, she'll heave herself a few yards away and try again. If nothing at all is to her liking, she'll abandon and return to the sea without laying, hopefully to try again later.

But this one liked her spot enough to start digging. The is an astonishingly choreographed dance which she cannot see at all, because it is all done with her back flippers. First she balances her body by anchoring her front flippers deep in the sand. Using one massive flipper at a time, say, her left, she shovels out a scoop of sand by curling her flipper in on itself, then she lifts the left flipper out of the hole and traps the sand on the bank above the hole. Then she scoops with the right flipper. Then, before she can scoop again with her left, she flings the sand she trapped from the last scoop out of the nest altogether. You do not want to be in the line of fire when she is doing this, because you will be wearing, eating and seeing sand.

I moved from her rear to her head, watching her in amazement, marvelling at the tremendous effort this mother was giving. You can see, feel the the exhaustion. To come out of the sea, where your entire body weight is supported by salt water, to heave your giant body onto the beach, heave it up the shore, shovel sand to find a suitable spot, dig a hole 3.5 feet deep entirely with your back feet (imagine digging a perfect hole you cannot see entirely with your feet!), lay 75-100 eggs, cover the nest, camouflage it, and return to the sea. A process which can take up to two hours. You cannot help but be in awe of this act of determined creation.

She let out a gasp, exhaling and then drawing in another breath. I gasped with her. Thick, mucousy salt tears ran from the eyes of this sacred mother. I sat in front of her on my knees, encouraging her (more for me than for her). I cried to meet her. How beautiful, powerful is the spirit of nature.

When she began laying her clutch I volunteered to be the first to flipper tag her. I moved into a comfortable position behind her. Ronald held her flipper for me so I could find the right fleshy spot, I positioned the clamp, squeezed my eyes shut, apologized to her, and sqeezed the clamp with all my might (you don't want to be timid, timid squeezing means that the tag won't bite all the way through the flesh and clasp shut, and you'll end up hurting the turtle more, perhaps wounding her, causing an infection). When I opened my eyes, Ronald pronounced my tagging to be very good. A huge relief.

Throughout the course of the night, we tagged two more new turtles, and recorded two returns.

And then, we rescued four babies! Ronald found one on his (or her - you can't tell) back. We revived him and sent him on his way to the sea, where, if he is a he, he will never again return to shore, and if he is a she, she will return if she lives to 25 or 30, and is old enough to start nesting. Then we found three more stragglers who didn't make it out of the nest. Sometimes, if they are unlucky enough to be from eggs that are on the bottom of the clutch, and after 70 of your brothers and sisters have stood on your head to get out of the nest, you don't have much of a shot, you are, in effect, a snack for something else in the circle of life. The guide pulled the three from the nest, and we carried them to the shore where they did not show much life. One wiggled a little, and started to wobble toward the surf, but the other two did not revive enough to crawl home. We had to leave them and move on, hoping that with enough rest they might live. A heartbreak and a hope carrying me home that night.

Day 3 or Proud Mama

2010-06-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

June 21, 2010

Last night at the airport, waiting for the rendezvous of Earthwatch volunteers, I made one last ditch effort to recover my rain jacket. I thought if I could just find some American Airlines people to talk to, maybe they would have a lost and found or something. But when airline workers don't want to be found, I think they disappear in to some kind of cosmic worm hole. So no more rain jacket.

We assembled slowly. Me, sharp as a tac Alice and her cherubic 16 year old granddaughter, 18 year old Sims who wants to study marine biology in college and is here for a graduation gift, Mary from England, and then a contingent of Europeans from the European Environment Agency (basically the European Equivalent of our EPA, only a lot smaller). Their director is sending them all on this trip for biodiversity training. So there is Linda, a Brit, Gerard and Josienne, French, Stephan, the German, Cigdem (pronounced CHEE-dum) from Turkey, Anita from Slovenia and Tarja from Finland, or as she says, "Feeenlund." We introduced ourselves and stood around awkwardly until our driver came and hauled us out to Matura, the village we are staying in for the research project. As we loaded ourselves and our luggage onto the minibus, the air was thick with a sense of adventure and anticipation. Linda and I sat next to each other and quickly discovered we were kindred spirits on the Cosmic Consciousness front, and that conversation kept us busy until we pulled in front of our guest house an hour later.

We were greeted with room temperature butter and garlic sandwiches (things that make you go "hmmm....") and some juice, and then packed off to bed. But not before the roomate haggling was settled. Immediately a persnickety few were angling for a different room assignment, but the very big upshot is that I got to room with Linda, my cool new Brit friend who hails from the town that made Newcastle Brown Ale. She has scored mega cool points because of the brew alone, not to mention the fact that we shared similar backgrounds and beliefs when it came to men, the Buddha, and living as a single woman.

It is critical to mention that there is no airconditioning in our guest house except for window airconditioners in the bedrooms, which is itself a massive relief, but means you often retreat to your bedroom in self defense from melting. To wake up is to start sweating. To step out of the shower is to start sweating. Yes, I know this is the tropics, but damn it is fucking hot. I'm not sure fucking hot even really covers it. Muggy, soggy, sticky, clammy, butt-crack moist, all might be understatements when it comes to the Caribbean during rainy season. It rained all last night again, and while I loved listening to the sound of it during the night, it left behind a steam bath of a morning. Imagine if you were a fly stuck between two hairy, sweaty donkey balls and you could not escape. That is about how hot and sticky it is here.

But there is not much time to be miserable here. Shortly after an...interesting... breakfast of salt fish (which is really salt with a little fish thrown in), curried green beans and some spinach schmoo, we had orientation. Dennis, the director of Nature Seekers came over from the headquarters (right next door) to welcome us and familiarize us with the basics: "ask for what you need, we are here to help you, we have lots of turtles, etc."

Next up was the beach orientation. We needed to see where we'd be working at night on the turtle patrols. So we all piled into the back of the truck (which looks like a paddy wagon with us all being hauled off to someplace unpleasant).

The drive to the beach is a bumpy 20 minutes over puddles and dirt and gravel roads, past the hodge podge houses of locals, mongrels and their pups running in the streets. Then the village houses dropped away and we reach the jungle's edge. Hoping down from the truck bed we headed eagerly in the direction of the shoreline.

Um, remember the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks? Yeah, that's where I am working. The isolation of this beach (it is restricted because of the turtles), the Atlantic ocean crashing on the shore, the line of palm trees and sea grapes inland, the bird of paradise flowers growing wild, the fallen coconuts littering the ground, the bits of lonely driftwood stranded on the shore drying in the sun, all meld into tropical perfection. Straight out of a Hollywood movie. I am a lucky bastard.

And then it happened, my first turtle. Just moments after we hit the beach, Sims spotted a baby turtle in the sand, lying on his back. At first glance I was prepared for tragedy; he did not look alive. But our guide, Richard, touched him and he moved a flipper! The little guy was still hanging on! Richard instructed us to get him wet in the ocean to cool him off a little, and to carry him with us during our tour of the beach, stroking him along the back of his cute little shell the whole way.

So we took turns carrying him, petting him, falling in love with him. Sims named him Ulysses. He was no more than four inches long, with a flipper span of four inches. His soft shell was soft black leather, his flippers mottled with white spots, his little head the cutest baby turtle head I have ever seen. (OK, this is the only baby turtle head I've see). People, baby turtles are fucking adorable.

With Ulysses in hand, we started our walk of the 8km beach, noting the different zones that have been set up for patrols, noting the beach erosion from the rain, noting the bites we were getting all over everywhere from some kind of sand fly, or sand flea, or sand fuckers more like.

I wish I could say the beach was pristine, but heartbreakingly, it is not. The trash and litter from oceans away, from cruise ships, from other countries, from the great swirl of trash in the Atlantic washes up on Matura Beach daily.

And from Trinidad itself, heavy rains flush the rivers of plastic bottles, glass bottles, plastic bags, pen caps, cigarette lighters, make up jars, fishing line, fishing nets, styrofoam, candy wrappers, unidentifiable bits of crap that does not belong in nature. My heart sank when I saw the piles of it, washed up on shore and regurgitated by the sea, as if to say, "I don't want this in me, you take it back."

Every February, before nesting season, the Matura community comes to the beach and cleans it, removes the trash and natural debris, anything that can get in the way of the turtles coming to nest. But as soon as it is clear, the trash starts coming in again, and it is more than the small staff at Nature Seekers can keep up with. It is beyond frustrating. All one can do is hope that one day we will all realize that what we do in one part of the world affects another. Does the person on that cruise ship who threw his coke bottle into the sea realize it may wash ashore in Trinidad and pollute the beaches that a critically endangered sea turtle comes to nest? Do I realize that everytime I buy a bottle of water, I create a new piece of trash? When we don't see the affects of our actions on a daily basis, we are not careful, caring, contientious. We must, for our own sakes, we must change. I am vowing to do my best never to buy another plastic bottle again, even if I recycle it.

When we had returned to the entrance to the beach, it was time to put Ulysses in the sand and send him off to join the real world. We put him down facing the ocean.

We watched him wander around a little at first, turn the wrong direction. We cheered him on and encouraged him to right his course toward the sea. He did, and his little flippers worked to carrying him home to water, to his life where he has a one in one thousand chance of survival.

I have to say, sending a baby sea turtle off to the ocean is a bit like sending your first born off to kindergarten. You stand there with pride watching him or her (Ulysses could be a girl) and you call out, "Bye cutie, have a gread day, don't get eaten!" I feel like a proud mama.

Day 2 or Port of Spain in Two Hours or Less

2010-06-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be so amazing to wake up to the sound of tropical birds chirping. Instead, this morning somewhere around 4:00am, I woke to the feeling of my laxative kicking in. "It's showtime," I muttered as I rolled out of my reasonably fluffy bed and padded to the bathroom. When the fireworks ended I crawled back in bed and about an hour later is when the tropical birds started. But the one right smack outside my widow was louder and more annoying than a French rooster at the crack of ass dawn. Hello ear plugs. But eventually that guy shut up and I could extract the pink foam in my ear canals and enjoy the more sedate chirping of the other birds all around. It's like living in an aviary down here.

Shortly after my nondescript breakfast the rain started. It's funny, but in Trinidad, "it's raining" has a whole new meaning. Good thing I have a brand new rain jacket for my planned walk through downtown Port of Spain today, or do I? Flashback to last night on the plane, picture myself napping on said rain jacket as a pillow, remember myself leaving it on the plane. Shit and double shit. I found myself turning to my hostess: "I am ashamed to ask you this, but do you have a Walmart?" There could be an upside to US world commercial domination after all. But no, no Walmart. They have KFC in Trinidad, they have Churches effing Chicken, but no Walmart. And I have no rain jacket. We suck at world domination.

I ventured out anyway, determined to see as much of the town on foot as I could, not minding the wet because in this heat it is actually a bit of a relief. But alas, my tour of POS was a complete bust. My hostess told me which areas to avoid walking, but I think pretty much all of Port of Spain has seen better days, although I am not sure when those days were. Maybe before the Europeans came, when the island was covered in lush tropical jungle and no one lived here but the half naked Amerindians? Where those the better days?

The "Magnificent Seven," a row of seven colonial buildings dating from the early 1900's, including the offices of the Prime Minister, are not so magnificent any more. Moldy stucco, moldy wood, moldy stone (I'm not sure if stone can mold, but if it can, then the stone on these buildings was moldy). Who got the idea that construction in the tropic zone was a good idea? How does anything ever set or dry here? There was probably a damn good reason why equatorial peoples evolved as scantily clad hunter gatherer tribes who lived in shelters made from palm trees and shit (well, not literally shit). There is nothing to rot or mold or get soggy. Silly white people: "Hey! I have a great idea! Let's introduce northern construction materials!!! Won't that be fun? We can build something with dry wall and then watch it mold and then immediately repair it and keep repairing it until it finally crumples and then we can rebuild it! Good times!"

Truly, I have nothing to report on Port of Spain other than to avoid it altogether unless you are coming here for Carnival (which by all accounts is legendary, rivals Rio's, and draws revelers from the world over). The best part of the two hour trek was Dexter, a local who joined me shortly after leaving my guest house. He asked if I knew that Barak Obama was going to deliver us to the Promised Land. "Well, I don't know about that, but I voted for him if that counts any," I said. "No, he will deliver us. Martin Luther King - you know Martin Luther King? - Yes, he had a dream of the Promised Land and he didn't get to see it, but Barak Obama is going to take us there." UM. OK. Sure. If you say so Trini dude. In addition to MLK and Obama, Dexter covered Napolean Bonaparte, the American Revolution in 1776, former CIA director George Tenet, the new CIA director Leon Panetta, and the origination of the US Marine Corps. It was the most interesting coversation all day.

I gave up on Port of Spain, hoofed back to my room, grabbed a coconut along the way (guy hacked it open and I slurped the juice), showered off the wet and the sweat, and napped in self defense until is was time to retreat to the airport for the rendezvous with the Earthwatch People.

My guy with the coconuts:

June 20, 2010

Day 1 or The Shoulder is Always the Fastest Lane in Trinidad

2010-06-22T06:33:00.000-07:00

June 19, 2010

Tonight, as I flew over the Caribbean sea, the light from the half moon reflecting off the obsidian surface of the water, I thought how blessed I am that I am about to experience one of the adventures on my personal 1,000 Places to See/Things to Do Before I go Belly Up list. I am going to meet face to face with one of the last living dinosaurs on earth, a leatherback turtle. The turtle got added to "The List" a couple of years ago when I saw and episode of Globe Trekker. Justine, the host, was lying prone in the sand on a beach in Trinidad, her face just inches from that of a giant egg laying Leatherback. I could see on her face, wide with wonder, that she was having a profound experience, like she was touching The Infinite. And since I am all about the Cosmic Connection these days, I made a mental addition to the 1,000PTS/TTDBIGBU list. And now here I am, flying to my own date with a turtle.

My guest house was kind enough to send a taxi to pick me up at the airport, and as I exited customs I saw the sign with my name spelled in a new and exciting way. My driver, however, was shaking his head. "Two hours of traffic to get into Port of Spain, eh?" (I haven't figured out how to write the Trinidadian accent, so just imagine Jamaican, mon. Et's close eenough for de time, eh?) He lead me out to a 1979 Caprice Classic, eggplant colored. This car screamed to be on Pimp My Ride. It was the ultimate pimp-mobile. Inside was a time capsule of automobile nostalgia: first generation automatic windows and door locks with the flat metal toggle, old school radio, bench seats. This car would translate to instant street cred back home. I sensed he was pretty proud of it too by the way he answered "1979" with decided verve when I asked what year it was.

On the ride from the airport I learned that lane demarkations in Trinidad are just suggestions really. When the traffic came to a painful stand still along with the air, and we sat with the windows open in the oppressive heat sucking the exhaust of the other hoopty cars inches from us, my driver swerved left onto the shoulder, and proceeded to drive, unimpeded, for a substantial distance. "Dee shoulda ees always da fastest lane in Trinidad, eh." If you say so Trini dude. Hence, what would have been a three hour drive from the airport, became a two hour drive. We passed, to my immense surprise, Churches Chicken and Popeyes. But I was downright pissed when we passed the combo Pizza Hut/KFC. Really, commercial world domination is annoying. When I groaned at KFC my driver said, "What, you don't like eet? KFC ees da nationale dish in Trinidad!"

In my room at my guest house at half past midnight, I showered, popped a laxative to pre-empt the encroaching Vacation Constipation, cranked the blessed window box A/C to the max possible, and drifted off into an uneasy, humid sleep.

Day 9 or God Bless Immodium

2009-07-10T14:27:00.000-07:00

Notes on Saturday June, 27, 2009

If it is possible to have a full-on beef hangover, I had one this morning. Last night's beef and beer binge has left a large food baby in my stomach which necessitaed a morning long camp out in the bathroom.

Problem. In Brazil you don't flush your toilet paper. You put it in a trash bin right next to the toilet. True, this concept was pretty gross and inexplicable at first, but as long as you have the vacation constipation and you are just peeing all the time, it's really NBD. But then the Amazonian fruits and the indigenous vegetables do their thing, and needless to say the vacation constipation has come to an earth shattering end. And then you are mortified about your horrifically skid marked toilet paper decorating the top of the trash bin and you spend fifteen minutes arranging a layer of clean paper on top so the poor maid who has to empty it doesn't look at the remnants your intestinal discards and say to herself in Portuguese, "Damn girl, what did you eat?"

I don't know what it is. Is my body rejecting the hormone and antibotic free meat? Is it rebelling against the unprocessed carbohydrates and preservative free vitamin laden fruits and veg? Is it protesting the free range chicken? the fresh milk? the organic coffee? the fresh squeezed juices? Are my intestines screaming, "I want my high fructose corn syrup back!"? What gives? How much more of this can I take? And it's even more embarrassing because today everyone was waiting for me downstairs to go on an excursion. When I finally escaped the bathroom I found everyone outside already with the cars out waiting to go. I didn't know how to say, "I was upstairs shitting my intestines out my ass" in Portuguese, so I just shrugged and said "desculpe" (sorry) and got in the car three shades of red.

They say one of the hallmarks of an old person is if you sit around with your other old people friends and discuss the nature and frequency of your bowel movements. I guess Rachel and I qualify. We look at each other, shake our heads in disbelief and say "Jesus girl, what did we eat?" Then we go pop and Immodium. I am not sure what's preferable, the vacation constipation or the vacation constipation liberation. One thing is for sure, my poor butt is endlessly on fire.

When I did finally leave the bathroom we piled into a couple of car's and headed out of town, up into the mountains. Rodrigo's parents are buying a farm. The Godfather, Ze, is an agronomist by trade. He helps farmers get loans from the Brazilian government by signing off on their farm projects. Basically, Ze gets paid to spend the government's money. Pretty good deal. But now Ze wants his own farm, his own little piece of paradise where he can build a farm house with an enormous kitchen and an even better restaurant.

The farm he has his eye on is six or seven km from town. We bounce over unpaved red dirt roads, we kick up a clouds of orange dust, we rumble across more wood plank bridges that don't look strong enough to hold the weight of a cat, let alone a car, and we pass other farms with coffee beans spread out on wide flat pavements drying in the sun. When we arrive and THE farm, my jaw drops in the dirt. This ain't Anutie Em's farm, Dorothy. This is a coffee farm, high and verdent and lush. It looks like what I think Hawaii might look like having never been there.

We spent the day wending through the dense coffee bushes, eating citrus straight from the tree, admiring the papaya, pineapple, apple, banana, orange trees. We found mandioca root (the staple of the diet) peppers, herbs, avocados, raspberries. I ate a ripe coffee bean (it tasted like persimmon). Diego took a machete to a sugar cane stalk. He hacked it down, whittled the outer husk away, and cut a chunk for each of us. You are supposed to wedge the chunk into your back teeth and bite down, letting the sweet juice explode over your tongue. I liked it, even though the cane was fibrous and hard and I had little sugar cane splinters in my mouth I had to keep spitting out. We drank mineral water from a spring. I pointed to a colorful rooster and said "Chupa cabra" to Ze and he chuckled and shook his head.

Then we climbed a hillside to the site where Ze and Mariza want to build the new farm house (a.k.a. the future vacation spot of yours truly if I can manage to get adopted as the long lost white cousin, or I can just wrangle another invitation). The view from the hillside was made by God herself and Rachel and I salivated over the notion of waking up to that outside your window every morning. From that spot on the hillside you could see all of the valley and the mountains beyond, the coffee bushes draping the hillsides like those netted Christmas lights, the mist shrouding the highest peaks.

Rodrigo mentioned that this part of Espirito Santo is so overlooked that scientists discovered three new species of plant and animal here in the last few years. And Rachel and I marveled that we are very likely the first outsiders to set foot on this land since the Portuguese moved through. (Seriously, the majority of the people in Iuna have never seen a foreigner). It makes me feel like an explorer, like a pioneer, like a brave adventuress off scouting unknown, unseen lands and I get giddy with the idea of it.

But thank God I get to climb back into a Fiat and not a conestoga wagon and ride back to town in relative comfort and sit on a real toilet for the rest of the day with my intestinal affliction where I don't have to wipe with banana leaves. This is mercy indeed.

Informational Update

2009-06-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

Sunday, June 28, 2009

There is a chance I may not return home, ever. But not because I was mugged in Rio, or because I was eaten by an Anaconda, or my kidneys harvested in Sao Paulo and I was left in a bathtub in some favela. But because the US is up two to zero against Brazil right now in the FIFA Confederation Championship and I cannot help my nationality. Rodrigo's dad keeps threatening not to feed Rachel and I if the US wins. I could starve to death down here.

As it is, I have a bet with Rodrigo's dad that I'll drink a shot of cachaca every time the US scores, so I'm already in trouble.

Day 8 or the Real Churrasco

2009-06-28T07:25:00.001-07:00

Notes on Friday, June 26, 2009

Breakfast today was a revelation. A soup (soup?) made with farm fresh cow's milk (they have to boil the milk!), clove, cinnamon, roasted peanuts and hominy. Who in the world thought this up? Is there a special Betty Crocker prize for creating the homeiest, christmas-y tasting, sweet and hearty soup ever? I could eat a vat of it everyday in winter. I realize I am living in a restaurant with a master chef who started cooking at the age of 11. You never know what is going to be put in front of you and so you taste slowly, cautiously with just the tip of your spoon, until the tastebuds explode with pleasure and you think "And I didn't even pay $15 for this!"

It was good we had the super soup too, because today's outing was a trek up to the same spot we were last night, high above town, to visit the shrine of Agua Santa (Holy Waters). It didn't take long climbing the steep cobbled streets of Iuna before Rachel and I start feeling the sweat beads forming on our brows and our breath coming harder. Rodrigo pointed to an old woman walking up the same hill. We look over and this 70 year old woman's mouth isn't even open! She is breathing entirely through her nose and great! Rachel and I have now gotten smoked by a crusty old lady. This is embarrassing. Muito embarrassing.

But once we cleared the edge of town, the dirt road opened to vast hills rolling with coffee and banana trees. The coffee bushes drape the sides of the mountains like those netted christmas lights. During the walk Rodrigo pointed out different plants. "When I was a kid we used to take this berry, see the spikes on it?, and we would use them in sling shots to pelt each other. See this plant? You can make tea with this." It seems like everything green has a use here, culinary, military or any -ary.

At the shrine, there is a molding display of molding pictures of people and pets who have been cured by the waters. There are bits of clothing from the faithful cured dangling from a clothesline, there are statues and prayers and the shrine is enclosed in a locked rusty iron fence that makes the whole thing look more depressing than miraculous. Still, the shrine is interesting, even if the sacred pool is full of stagnant green water. There is a spring of holy water you can drink from, which I did and I wonder if it the holy waters can cure you of an over active appetite as well as breast cancer. A little further on the trail is a fallen boulder that leans against the rock face of the mountain. Local lore says if you pass through the impossibly skinny opening between boulder and rock three times all your sins are forgiven. I figured I already did my penance last year on the pilgrimage, but why not attempt this just for good measure. So I squeeeeeeeze my boobs and booty and all the other junk through the crevice three times. And then it is Rachels turn. She gets about an eighth of the way into the opening, backs out and says, "I like my sins."

Back home in the afternoon, preparations were being made for that evening. Beer is delivered here like milk or soda used to be delivered to my house when I was a little kid. Long before everybody drove to Kroger for everything. I watch as Ze gives the beer delivery guy a shot of cachaca for his trouble before he leaves.

And at long last it is time for what I have come to Brazil for, churrasco (pronounced shur HA sko), brazilian barbeque. This particular cut of beef we are going to feast on tonight is called picanha and it is beef with an outer rim of fat marinated in rock salt, nothing more, and grilled over an open flame until deeply rich in flavor, with a salty crust, and addictive. The beer comes out, The rum (pronounced "hoom") and coke, the cachaca, the olives.

Back home in Atlanta there is a restaurant called Fogo de Chao and it is like $60 a person for sheer carnivorous hedonism. They have good looking gouchos in billowy pants serving the meat on skewers until you are full to bursting. But here everyone passes the cutting board around and takes a slice of beef, passes it on, and then waits for the next piece of picanha to get crusty and charred, when anyone who happens to be near the flame will slice it and pass it on again.

Then the musicians showed up. Not hired musicians though (unless you count payment of beer and beef and cachaca). These musicians are friends from the town. An old guy with a cerveja belly and his son. The old guy sat next to me with a bongo drum and his son strummed a baby guitar and everyone sang the songs of Brazil and drank and ate picanha. And everyone here is a musician or a singer. Rodrigo plays guitar and sings, Diego (Rodrigo's brother) taught himself to play drums. More than half of the people in Rodrigo's circle grew up playing some manner of device that makes a tune. And if someone doesn't have an instrument in their hands they are keeping time with a fork against a plate or knife on a bottle.

They switched to some English songs (the Beatles, Credence Clearwater, Elvis) and now Rachel and I could at least join in on the refrains (embarrassing that we don't even know the verses to Have You Ever Seen the Rain and Brazilians do). No one here knows the actual words though, they all sing phonetically like we sing La Bamba and have no idea what the actual words are. It is pretty amusing to hear the lyrics to Proud Mary sung as "bih wee kee on tornee, prow mary kee on bournee, holih, holih, holih ona reeeva." At some point during all of this merry making I got the notion that I could sing and felt an urgent need to regale them all with my rendidtion of Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Simon and Garfunkle despite the fact that I didn't know all the lyrics and the fact that people wouldn't pay me the gum off their shoe to hear me sing. But noooooooo. I wanted to sing damnit. It was about to get American Idol up in here. So I quickly copied the lyrics from Google on Lolita's computer (that's Rodrigo's sister) and returned for my duet with the old bongo player. I sang in my clunky alto, occaisionally switching to my blood curdling mezzo, only to be marginally kept in tune by bongo man. Between the two of us (he sang the words phonetically but at least he was in tune, I was flat but I had the lyrics in front of me) we made a halfway decent go of it. And when the end came I howled like a dog at myself, which made everyone laugh.

And then out came a curry goat that made me squeal with pleasure. Spicy, smokey, oniony. OMG, this was a carnivores dilemma: the goat, salty and spicy and juicy? or the beef, salty and crusty from the grill. I was already nursing a serious food baby by the time the goat came out. But I couldn't stop myself (apparently the holy waters from Agua Santa do not cure an obscene appetite).

Two more friends showed up with guitars and cowboy hats and now they started singing the haunting, lonely Brazilian country music of the western ranchers. Their harmony was beautiful and aching and my belly was aching too and we all swayed to the acoustic strumming and let it wash over us as we digested the large land animals in our stomachs. I guess Brazilian cowboy music is appropriate for cow digestion. At 12:30 I could not longer keep upright and needed to retreat to my sanctuary to digest in horizontal fashion. But the party continued for a few more hours and I realized that this sort of impromptu gathering is the normal order here in Iuna, in Brazil. This is the real churrasco, and a million times better than Fogo de chao.

Hey come on over! tell so and so to come too. and so and so. we'll throw a cow on the grill. we'll get the beer delivered. we'll sit around, drink, eat, play. sing. laugh. live.

The Godfather Part IV

2009-06-28T07:24:00.007-07:00

Notes on Jose Carlos Dias de Carvalho

If Juan Valdez had played the Godfather instead of Marlin Brando, you'd pretty much have the start of Ze. Throw in an impish sense of humor and a penchant for mischief and now you are getting even warmer.

Ze wears a fedora and a mustache. He refused to be photographed without his hat on. His button down short sleeve shirts are left open. He has tiny feet and wears tiny cowboy boots.

When Ze wakes up at 5:00 am, he starts cooking, and he doesn't stop until after dinner (he is semi retired). Feeding large quantities of people large quantities of food seems to be his passion (along with cacti, of which he has over 200). Ze has been cooking since he was 11 (unusual for a man in these parts), and cooking is no joke for Ze. He doesn't let anyone else in the house cook, not even his wife. Once he fired a maid for burning rice in the bottom of a pan.

Ze will put a meat dish on the table at lunch and tell Rachel and I it's cat. Ze will make a shrimp dish and tell Rachel (who doesn't eat seafood) that he made it just for her.

When Ze decides everyone else in the house should be up, usually around 9:30, he goes up to the terrace and cranks the Brazilian Forro music on the sound system. Forro is music from the northeast of Brazil that combines African drums with, oh my god, the accordian. It's not pretty. I feel like I am back in my Opa's house listening to German polka and I wonder how on earth did northeastern Brazil, which was mostly populated by African slaves, get hold of the accordian and why on earth, once they got it, did they keep it? It was funny the first five times.

Ze's neighbor calls to ask him to turn the music down and he hangs up the phone and turns the music up. He thinks the neighbors are uptight and too religious and he likes to antagonize them.

When Ze summons you to play canasta, you will be playing canasta. Canasta is another thing Ze takes seriously besides cooking and cacti. Ze sits across from Mariza and cusses at Rachel and I in Portuguese. When we don't discard a card he can use he pounds his fist on the table and cries "damn you!!!" and then giggles because we don't understand him. When we put a black 3 on the pile preventing him from snatching it he grumbles "punta merde." That's "bitch shit," another popular (if inexplicable) combination of cuss words.

By the way, people cuss alot down here. Cussing is an all occaison pastime. Spill some juice? Stub your toe? Just say "caralho!" (cock!). They say "sperm" alot too. Sperm is a good one. The word is porra and it also means cum. Dog peed on the floor? "porra!" works fine.

Rodrigo comes up and Ze tells him that he's been cussing at us the whole time and we don't even know it, then he chuckles so that his shoulders bounce up and down like he has the hiccoughs really fast. Ze is happy when he wins at canasta. Ze says Barack Obama is fixing the game if Rachel and I have a good round. I get the feeling it's not smart for us to win.

When Brazil beat South Africa in the FIFA Confederation Championship semi final and Brazil was going to play the U.S. in the final that Sunday, Ze started threatening Rachel and I that if the U.S. won, we wouldn' eat.

Ze calls me Kreecheena, because pronouncing Kristin is a pain in the ass. Or sometimes he just calls me "the tall woman."

Ze's last name is Carvalho, which means "oak" in Portuguese. Interestingly, Carvalho is only one easily unenunciated V off from caralho, "cock." There is a saying in Portuguese you use when you're pissed at someone: "I'm gonna send you to the casa des caralhos." I'm gonna send you to the house of cocks. Ze intentionally answers his phone, "Casa de Carvalho" and nearly drops the V.

Ze wants to marry me off. When he asked Rachel about me before I came down, he wanted to know three things: Is she a picky eater? (no), Does she drink? (um. a bit), and is she religious? (about drinking). All right answers. So Ze wants me to marry one of Rodrigo's 1800 cousins because he is tall like me and speaks English. I meet him and immediately decide on e-Harmony. Ze is fired along with Melie.

Before my arrival on the scene, Ze had a conversation with Duck. In Portuguese, the verb "comir" means "to eat." It is also used as a double entendre for "to fuck." Moecco asked if I liked to eat Duck. Ze shook his head and said, "No one likes to eat Duck."

Ze likes to tease me when I get up late in the morning by saying "good afternoon," even if it is clearly still morning, and I insistantly tell him "good morning."

When Ze is finished cooking for the day, he goes to his bedroom, stretches out on the bed and watches his Tele Novellas. These are Brazilian soap operas, which everybody, even the men watch down here. They are more dignified than the Spanish and Mexican one's I've seen, like Fuego en la Sangre." He turns the volume up super loud, like the Forro music, and falls asleep.

Political correctness is not in Ze's vocabulary. When Ze commented about Barack Obama Mariza said "whatever, you had an afro in the 70's." In Portuguese the words for afro literally translate to "black power." The actual hair style is called black power. Ze looked chagrinned and defended himself, "the black power was the style then!"

I like Ze.

Day 7 or the Mysteries of Iuna

2009-06-28T07:24:00.005-07:00

Notes on June 25th, 2009

In the U.S. I don't drink orange juice because I don't think it tastes like oranges. Ever. In Spain I drank it when ever I could because it was fresh squeezed by an automatice machine. And this morning I drank tangerine-orange juice fresh squeezed by hand and the oranges were from less than a mile away. I can feel the vitamins and minerals coursing through my body making me healthy and whole and giving me super powers. I want to climb Mt. Everest!

Today I saw Iuna (pronounced Yuna). This is where Rodrigo's family lives and I gotta say, Iuna is not a pretty town. It's not exactly a pit (I've been in a few pits to get gas and whatnot with Mike and Melie), but it's far from a show pony. There has been little attention payed to aesthetics here, except the odd, half-hearted attempt to plant some trees in a town square, or make a nice stone walkway by the riverside. But other than that, nada. A few individual houses here and there have spruced up a tad, added some pretty flowers, a decorative railing, a nice paint color, but there is no "nice neighborhood" per se. At first glance you'd be tempted to think this was a working class town, because it is clear the focus is on utility, not prettiness. It is a place where farmers still come into town sitting in a cart pulled by a donkey or horse. And oddly, unfinished buildings are all over, some of them lived in, some seemingly abandoned. Rodrigo says there is a saying in Brazil, everything under construction is already a ruin. People build their own houses and when the money runs out, they stop for a while. So second stories languish, stucco may cover only the first floor, or the roof over the terrace is still a work in progress. Rachel says the dirt pile on the street in front of the neighbor's house has been there since she started coming to Iuna four years ago.

But the gritty facade of the town belies a great deal of coffee wealth, which is hidden indoors, or in other ways. Rodrigo pointed out the houses of wealthy coffee growers and informed me that alot of people, when they accumulate money, buy more land instead of sprucing up the houses. Probably not a bad idea. After all, who are they trying to impress? Foreigners don't come hear for anything. It would be like going to the U.S. and visiting Hamilton, OH. Why would you? And every middle class family has a maid. The maid does the dishes, the laundry, she cleans everything, she mops, irons, dusts. (I haven't washed a dish or done a lick of my own laundry since I've been here, and I'm kinda getting spoiled). Oh, and your second story might not be finished, but you sure as shit have satellite TV. No doubt.

Lunch today was my first experience of Ze's home cooking. Ze made baccalao. Ironically, baccalao is not Brazilian. It is Norwegian salted cod, and it is very fancy and special down here because it comes all the way from Norway and ain't cheap. I think Ze was putting on the dog for me a bit, but I didn't come here to eat Norwegian food. I want Brazilian beef and weird amazonian fruits and vegetables I've never seen before! The baccalao was still good though, mixed with veggies and enough melted cheese to cause a coronary. But it reminded me of a tuna casserole. A really good tuna casserole, but still, tuna casserole is tuna casserole.

After dark R&R and Whathisname cousin and I went to a local bar and sat on the sidewalk drinking beer, when all the sudden we heard CNN announcing that MJ had bit it. What? Seriously? MJ? Dead? Jacko? It was kind of like hearing that sasquatch had been found, it was not at all what you were expecting.

Duck came by the bar, picked us up and drove us around the city. We were on our way to a high road above the town to get a good view when we passed the one and only motel in Iuna. The Motel Eldourado.

Brazilian motels are iconic. They are exclusively for sex. You rent the rooms by the hour, and they are rumored to have saunas, hot tubs, toys, mirrored ceilings, porn, the works. Only no one says so from experience because no one wants to admit they've been to one. They have names in English (because English is fancy here) like the Love Motel (with both O's as neon hearts), and the Kiss Motel and Motel Las Vegas (because what happens in the Motel Las Vegas stays in the Motel Las Vegas). They are surrounded by high walls and there is concealed parking so your wife or your husband or your mom can't drive by and see your car parked there. It is all designed to make infidelity super easy to commit.

So anyway we drive past the motel, which everyone gawks at hoping to use their x-ray vision to see what's going on inside, and we continue up to the ridge above town. There we get out and it's spooky because supposedly a woman commited suicide from up there (doesn't every town have a spooky spot where some depressed woman threw herself from a cliff?)and we talk about the chupacabra (that mysterious South American vampire wolf creature that drains chickens of their blood and leaves them floppy and lifeless with two fang holes on their necks). Then we look up at the sky and I am amazed at the stars again. I never see stars like this in Atlanta. I spot the Southern Cross, the only constellation I know in the southern hemisphere and vow to find out about more of them.

Day 6 cont. or Bem-Vindo a Iuna

2009-06-28T07:24:00.003-07:00

Notes on Day 6, June 24th continued.

I did not have to wait long at the bus station in Ibatiba for Rodrigo and Rachel to come rescue me, which was good because it was hot as dog balls. One of Rodrigo's 1800 cousins drove us. He is known only by the name of Bocao (pronounced Bokown), which means Big Mouth, because, well...he has a really big mouth, not because he talks alot. I feel for him because I think it would be like someone picking my very worst body feature and then nicknaming me that. I imagine someone calling me, "Hey Saddlebags, what up?" or "Let's go pick up Droopyboobs!" You would always be reminded. I secretly pity the guy.

The ride to Iuna was not long, maybe about 20km, but it revealed a glimpse of the promising terrain I was now in. Orderly rows of coffee bushes draped the hillsides, leading up to patches of Mata Atlantica (Atlantic rain forest) on the mountain peaks and troughs. A high green land where you think everything must grow and I couldn't wait to explore it.

I didn't see much of Iuna since we went straight to Rodrigo's family home. Rachel gave me the 10 cent tour: a street level garage, bedroom and extra bath, a second level with three bedrooms, two baths, a formal living room, bar, TV room, kitchen and outdoor courtyard and beautiful balcony over looking the street, and a third floor...restaurant? Seriously, that's what I said when Rachel lead me up the steps: "Oh my gosh, there's a restaurant up here!" It's not a restaurant, of course, it is a terrace, but just about two thirds of the top floor is a covered open air space with several sets of tables and chairs, a large sound system for music (and real musicians), and a terrace kitchen complete with cabinets, sink, oven, grill, and large wood burning stove. You could cook for 50 up here, and entertain them as well, and apparently Rodrigo's dad does.

The remaining third of the third floor is comprised of two more bedrooms and a bath. And this is where I was to be ensconced. After a shower, a critical change of undies, and a generous schmear of deodorant, I came down to meet Rodrigo's parents. Mariza, his mother, is the size of a string bean with olive skin, jet black hair, designer glasses. At 50 she has an effortless chicness about her I didn't have at 20. Jose Carlos is Rodrigo's dad. They call him Ze (pronounced Zeh) for short. Let's just say I am not going to describe Ze now because I have a feeling he needs a blog entry all his own.

I presented them with gifts, whisky for Ze and a pricey body butter and soaps for Mariza. I wanted to get in good with Ze and I heard scotch would do it so I carefully researched good scotch before I left. I dared not go empty handed. Any good girl brought up to hear her mother's voice in her head saying "you are going to bring them something aren't you?" (even though she knows she brought you up to do that but she still feels she has to remind you at 34 of your manners) would not go empty handed. I know other moms do this, not just mine, but I still can't help whining through a clenched jaw "Mooooooom, I'm thirty four, yeesh. I know how to be a guest in someone's house." I can't decide who this reflects on more: me that she doesn't trust my manners? or her that she forgets she taught them? My guess is she knows I am not a complete Philistine, but for some reason there is a gene on the mom chromosome that instructs mom's to say stuff like that, and you can't turn it off without some kind of genetic mutation. So at 54 I still hear, "Don't forget to thank them for taking such good care of you and feeding you and putting up with you when they certainly didn't have to because they did it out of the kindness and generosity of their hearts and they paid for all of your food and your beverages and everything and you didn't have to stay in a hotel and you saved a ton of money that way so actually they saved you a ton of money that way and don't forget to say thank you."

After introductions, I was introduced to dinner, Iuna style. Dinner is not the big meal. Lunch is the big meal. Dinner is usually a simple affair of French bread (out of the oven two hours ago though), some butter (yellow as a school bus and creamy smooth), coffee (dark and hot and sweeter than royal frosting), and cheese. And oh my god the cheese. This is the fabled Minas cheese, so called because Minas Gerais makes some of the best cheese in all of Brazil. There is always, always a wheel of fresh, locally made Minas cheese on the table. It is almost all protein, little fat, salty, firm, and you would be happy as a clam to pay $12 for a small sliver of this on a plate in a froofroo restaurant back home if it was paired with a nice dolop of Ze's homemade star fruit preserves. I am serious people. This cheese, smeared with tart n tangy star fruit jam, can rival and best many of the restaurant cheese plates I have had in any Celebrity Cheese Death Match. So I ate a small municipality's worth of it, not realizing it would appear again at breakfast.

Oh yeah, and the juice. I have to tell you about the juice. So Rodgrigo asks me what I want to drink for dinner: coffee or juice, and I say juice because coffee in the evening makes me jittery like a phsych patient hooked up to electrodes. And get this, his mom starts making the araca-una juice from scratch! As in smashes the berries, strains them in a seive, and mixes the juice with water and sugar. I was mortified! I immediately heard my mom in my head: "Don't make them go to any extra trouble over you," and I started apologizing to Rodrigo asking him to apologize to his mom saying that I didn't mean for her to go to all that trouble. And Rodrigo explained to his mom that I thought the juice would come from a carton and she just started laughing at me like, "What a silly notion, a carton? Who ever heard of such a thing when you can have fresh squeezed juice any time?" But damn the juice was good. I can't really even define the taste of the araca-una berry (too many fruits down here defy description by my palate of limited fruit experience). And in the end I was all, "hey, if you wanna make me juice from scratch because that's how you roll down here, who am I to complain?"

After dinner, and after a little after dinner liquor at the bar, we headed up to the restaurant, oops I mean terrace, to do what Iuna-ites do in the evenings: hang out. But it didn't take long for the cerveja to come out (beer), and the cachaca, salomi, green olives all spread on the table. And then people started arriving from nowhere. Rodrigo's friends and a few of the 1800 cousins. Bocao was there, and a new guy who they called Playmobile because his hair was frozen in place like a Lego or Playmobile person, a cousin whose name I had no shot at pronouncing, and a friend nicknamed Marreco (Duck) becuase of his faint resemblence to a, well...duck. (Again with the nicknames based on unflattering features).

Everybody has nicknames down here, and not just one either. Rachel is right, we need everybody to wear nametags with their given names and all nicknames listed in order of preference or something because I've just ended up calling everyone "Whatshisname." Whatshisname who's a cousin with the thinning hair. Whatshisname who's the duck. Ohhhh...Whathisname who is really hot over there with the 5 o'clock shadow and the... "Kristin, he's married with a daughter." Damn. Are you sure? "I'm sure." Damn.

And the music starts, the Brazilian beats, and the cerveja flows, the crisp light beer, and then comes slices of seared filet mignon and grilled onions and I realize I haven't stopped eating since I arrived 5 hours ago. The party continued on till three a.m., long after I had given up trying to stay awake and went to bed.

If the first night is any indication, I am in for some interesting leisure time here in Iuna. Let the good times roll my friends.

Day 6 or Little Grasshopper Says Chao to Her Senseis

2009-06-28T07:24:00.001-07:00

Notes on June 24, 2009

A frosty wet cold settled over the monastery in the night and this morning it was not easy getting out of bed. We all agreed to meet at 8:30 to head to breakfast, where we fried our own eggs and grilled bread on a brick oven. We drank our coffee slowly and lingered over the table, enjoying one last subdued coversation before we would have to part ways.

I decided it would be a good time to interrogate Mike on all the times he'd been thrown in prison during his travels around the world. Indeed, Mike's encounters with foreign police have provided some running jokes this week during our road trip. Just yesterday Mike and Naimon tried to convince Rob and Melie and I that the cops confiscated our rental car when they went to park it for lunch and we couldn't get it back because Mike wouldn't pay a bribe. This yarn, by the way, was completely credible. Mike had alluded to his refusal to pay bribes landing his butt in jail before, so I immediately started to tense up. Was I going to do my first hard time in a Brazilian prison? Would I have a bucket for a toilet? Have to sleep on a rat infested floor? It was a half terrifying, half exhilarating prospect (exciting only because I was with Mike and Melie though; otherwise I would have been peeing myself). But Naimon can't lie, like, at all, and he tried to cover his smile with his hand and the jig was up almost as soon as it began. Of course Melie's reaction was fascinating. I think many women would respond to "Honey, we have no car" with "great! Just great! Now what are we going to do?" and a great deal of arm flapping. Not Melie. Melie just shrugged and sighed like this whole thing was no more than a temporary irritation, like waiting in line at the DMV or something. Completely unflappable, and no arm flapping either.

Mike always introduced his prison stories with, "Yeah, that time was pretty funny, actually." The rest of us would look at him and repeat faintly, "funny?". But, some of them really are funny, like the time in Uraguay when a "cop" pulled him over on his motorcycle saying that Mike had hit him. Mike didn't recall hitting anything and asked for his badge. Mike thought his "police" papers looked suspicious and denied he hit the guy. The guy wanted a bribe and pointed to the police station and threatened to take Mike there if he didn't pay, and Mike was all, "fine, let's go to the police station." So as they approach the police station, the "cop" starts dragging his leg and limping, and inside he rolls up his pant leg to show the real cop a week old bruise (black and blue and clearly healing). The cop looks at Mike and goes, "this guys says you hit him, pay a bribe and you can go." And Mike's all, "I'm not paying a bribe." So the cop puts him in jail, and all night long the cop keeps asking him if he is going to pay and all night long Mike keeps refusing to pay unless he gets to call his embassy. "Gimmie the phone first." Finally he offered to pay with a credit card so he could get a receipt. The cops had no idea what to do with that one, so the next morning they let him out cause they figured there was nothing they could really do to him.

In Argentina he ran into a "radar trap" where a cop jumped out of the bushes saying he was speeding. Mike asks to see the radar gun to see how fast he was going. The "cop" says, "I don't have the radar gun, a guy up on that ridge has the gun and he told me you were speeding." So Mike asks the guy if he can talk to the guy on the ridge and see what the radar gun says, but the "cop" has no radio. Hmmmmm, so how did the cop on the street know to stop Mike???? So Mike landed in jail for a few hours on that one, mostly for poking holes in the cop's lame ass story.

In Venezuala he did an overnighter for driving with a burned out headlight on his motorcycle. In Angola he did a short stint with a photo journalist from Belgium, In Peru (oh wait, this one is funny), Mike and a friend came across a street party and decided to join in the fun before they realized it was actually a rally for the Sendero Luminoso, the Shining Path communist rebel group in Peru. So when the riot police show up, Mike & Co. get thrown in the paddy wagon and hauled off to prison for processing. But at the station, there is such a throng of people who were caught up in the sweep that it was totally disorganized and completely lax. So Mike suggests to his friend that they just keep edging toward the door and once outside they, "run like fuck." Hence, Naimon and I exclaim, "Oh my god you escaped from a South American prison?!?!?!?" "It wasn't really and escape, more like AWOL," came the reply.

"OMG! I would be sooo panicking!" I said. "No," says Mike. "You panic the first time it happens," after that you just realize, "hey, I've got a roof over my head, a place to sleep and they'll feed me, this isn't too bad."

After breakfast and Mike's Tour of South American Prisons, we said goodbye to Rob and Naimon. Mike made completely sure their arrangements for getting back to Ouro Preto were all made, and we hugged and said our goodbyes.

Mike and Melie and I piled in the car and headed east. Today is the day I was to up with my friends Rachel and Rodrigo. It has been tricky figuring out the logistics of the drop. Mike and Melie are headed south to Rio, and the southbound highway turns off before I get to Ibatiba, where my friends were to pick me up. But in the end, Mike and Melie decided they could take me all the way to Ibatiba and they would turn south further east. Didn't I say I couldn't have imagined a better stroke of luck than meeting up with these two? In the car we continued with the gratifying conversations we had been having all week. We talked about travel more. Mike was concerned that telling his tales of mild travel frustrations like being thrown in prisons or getting pistol whipped at bordor crossings or sleeping in road side ditches will discourage people from travel, when in reality the wonderful, the awe inspiring, the intense and rewarding experiences so far outweigh any negative experiences as to render them mild frustrations, truly.

For lunch we stopped at a roadside restaurant where the food was home cooked, cast iron pots bubbling with meat stews, vegetables, rice and beans, sitting on a woodburning stove. In fact, this is standard fare at roadside joints. It ain't your ordinary truck stop. The food tastes like grandma cooked it, because grandma probably did.

At the bus station in Ibatiba they dropped me off. We hugged and kissed goodbye. I told them I would travel with them any way, anytime, anywhere. I called Mike my sensei and told him that this little grasshopper had learned well. They invited me to Quebec and then drove off, Melie hanging out the window shouting, "Next time, Mali!" in farewell. And honest to god, I felt the telltale lump in my throat and a pricking burn behind my eyes. My encounter with M&M was so serendipitous, I almost feel like they were my travel guardian angels, and Virginia too, back in Sao Joao. I needed to meet these people, and there they all were.

Day 5 or The Cachaca Express

2009-06-28T07:23:00.001-07:00

Notes on Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Last night, after a lovely dinner with M&M and Rob and Naimon, R&N invited us all to drink cachaca with them. They had been collecting bottles and claimed they had some of "the good stuff," although none of us were really qualified to judge the good stuff from the rotgut. We had to rely on what we were told. So on the way home Mike and Rob haggled for limes and ice from a couple of bars (all the mercados were closed), and we scrounged for glasses and knives and sugar back at the pousada. Naimon and Melie mixed the caiparinhas, which were expertly done, and we all kicked back in the coziness of the antique pousada, the glow of the illuminated church across the street flooding in through the balcony windows.

It didn't take long for us to start telling bidnez. Rob is gay (well, we knew that bidnez already). Poor guy got fired from a job five years ago for it too. OMG. What is wrong with people? Melie and I actually thought Rob and Naimon were a couple, but Naimon is married to an actress in Norfolk. I guess we called that one pretty wrong. "No, we're not together, I just haven't found the right guy yet," was Rob's explanation. "Honey, neither have I," I sympathized. I got all girlie and showed Rob my bling bling from the mines that day, and we decided to drink some cachaca straight up. (If Rob lived in Atlanta, I would sooo make him my gay husband). Then two very nice, but very dignified Germans staying in the pousada joined us, and prevented the whole thing from degenerating any further, so Rob and Melie and I went to bed.

This morning at breakfast, Melie mused, "We should kidnap the gay guy and hees friend and take zem to the park wiz us today." The three of us were leaving Ouro Preto today for the old monastery at the Parque Natural do Caraca. A state park about two hours east of OP. It was time for some nature up in here. But the minute she said it out loud we decided it would be too fun not to, and we began scheming. When Rob came down, we told him we were plotting to take him and Naimon to the park with us, and they didn't really have a say in the matter. Rob was so flattered, gay boy flattered. It was completely cute. Naimon was a little more hesitant, but as we said, they didn't really have a choice.

There were a few logistical concerns. One: how were Naimon and Rob going to get back to OP the next day (M&M and I were heading east). And two: how were we going to fit 5 people, all M&M's luggage, my embarrassing luggage, and Rob and Naimon's overnight bags into the little clunker? Rob and I took off for the tourist info office to inquire about buses back to OP. Once that was figured out, we had to tackle the luggage. But Mike and I decided to head out for one last gander around town while everyone finished packing, and by the time we returned, the car had been stuffed with our stuff. Talk about expert shirker timing! It really was a miracle of spacial arrangement that we got all that junk in that tiny trunk. But they did it, and I took a picture of the trunk for proof.

Question: How many gringos can you pack into a baby car? Poor Naimon squeezed in the middle of the back seat and we set out, the left over cachaca packed safely in a plastic water bottle in the trunk. We had to stop at a garage to get an extra bolt for a rear hub cap. It was a little curious when the mechanic didn't go into the shop to get it, but took off down the street. "Is he getting it off another car?" Mike wondered. Where ever the guy got it, he didn't charge us anything. I just hope some poor other schmoe didn't lose his hub cap hitting a quebra mola. But we were finally on our way. We all exclaimed when we hit a quebra mola, and we teased Melie who was mortified when she asked for directions and the Brazilian woman thought she was speaking French instead of Portuguese, we puzzeled over Brazilian waxes and someone wondered aloud if we should all get matching landing strips, and we told stories about lost fingernails to ook each other out. Naimon told of ripping off a fingernail entirely, Mike told of his father's grotesque parting with a nail, Melie told of losing acrylics at a really bad time, and I grossed everyone out with my lost toenail story from the camino. When it came time for Rob to tell his nail story, he just said, "I get pedicures," with a sheepish shrug.

We had to drive through Mariana again on the way to the monastery and Melie suggested we eat lunch at the same place as yesterday. She had an alterior motive. She wanted to lay in the sun for 20 minutes in front of the igreja again. "Look at us, Mike," she said referring to the both of us. "Wee are soooo pasty, sooo transparent!" And then someone, I don't remember who, broached going back to the mine. Mike wanted to see the garim peiros actually mining, and after seeing my gems last night, Rob wanted to score some for his mom and sisters and nieces, and me? Well I just wanted more bling, period.

We pulled up to the mine again, got out of the car, and descended into it like we'd done this a thousand times, not just once the day before. It didn't take long for the predicted throng to arrive, but several of the garim peiros were hard at work in the mines below, chiseling chunks of mud into wheelbarrows. We looked for our favorite garim peiro from yesterday, a short guy with rain golashes and ball cap that looked like it might have been yellow at one time. Mike told Melie to ask for the "baixanho negro," the "litte black guy," explaining that it would not be seen as offensive here. "I am not going to say dat!" was Melie's reply.

But it didn't take long to find him down in a pit, systematically working the dirt. He waved at us and smiled and we spent a little while with the miners, just observing them work, Mike asking them more questions about the process. Apparently they can't pan the dirt for gold dust in the dry season because they can't pipe in water, so they just have to mine for the chunks and wait for the rainy season to collect enough water to pan.

And then the gems started coming out, but this time I was ready for them. Auga marinho, ametista, topazio, citrino, ametista verde, they were all waved in front of my eyes as they were yesterday. When they began quoting prices, I haggled, I frowned, I furrowed my brow, I put my fingers to my chin, I pursed my lips when I wanted them to lower their prices. I have to say, I have done a kick ass job of mastering numbers in Portuguese, at least up to eighty, so I was a deal making queen. And these guys, dirt poor as they are, are savvy too. They know what their gems are worth in a jewelry store in Minas, and if I went too low they haggled me back up. I mean, if you talk about tourism dollars going to benefit the local economy, you can't get any more direct than this, and I have to say, I am glad my money was going to buy good cachaca for these characters, and not lining the pockets of some Rio based commercial gem broker. In all I bought just three more gems today, gifts for people back home. And Rob got his too: four deep colored, emerald cut amethysts for his ladies. Score!

I have to say it was an even more gratifying experience today. I was advising Rob and Naimon on negotiations, giving them all the expert advice Mike had given me yesterday when I was about to pee my pants. Oh yeah, I was a big time show off now and swollen, perhaps a little too much so, with new found confidence. Naimon documented all of it with his new DSLR. He was the photojournalist on this adventure, and he flitted around us haggling with the miners, taking shots of me with my haggle face on, and of Mike examining raw rocks, and Rob brooding over a gems, and of us marching down the lonely dirt road to the mine to the ghostly, impoverished town beyond.

What amazes me so much is the proximity of the first world to the third world here in Brazil. The two coexist side by side, sometimes a swift thirty minute drive from each other, sometimes in the same town! Take Ouro Preto, a teeming town swelling with mostly Brazilian tourists, expensive restaurants and jewelry stores I can't aford, and not 40 minutes away is this place, a place where miners exist on less money and more cachaca in a year than we can possibly imagine. Mike yearned to spend an evening with these guys drinking cachaca and shooting the shit, finding out more of what their lives were like, and I would have loved to join them too, but alas we had to move on. We had a monastery and a mountain range and a four hour hike to a legendary waterfall waiting for us that afternoon.

Back on the road, Melie offered me this, "Hey Kreesteen, you know our garim perio is single, I asked heem for you." "Melie, I fired you, remember?"

Afternoon crept up on us sooner than we expected though, and we didn't arrive at the monastery until 4:30. The first glimpse of the gothic revival church nestled in a trough with stunning mountains cresting all around elicited a simultaneous "oooowwww" from everyone. But with sunset coming on it was too late to begin a hike to the waterfall. We contented ourselves with wandering around the exquisite formal gardens and watching the sun go down behind a foreground of rolling mountains. Naimon got attacked by a bat hiding in a small grotto in a hillside, Rob screamed like a girl, Mike and Melie hung out in their room, then Rob and Naimon and I raided the pousada kitchen for caiparinha making materials. The kitchen lady looked at us like we were crazy when we asked for the necessary random objects: a faca (knife), prato (plate), cinqo copos (five glasses), and acucar (sugar). But we couldn't explain ourselves in Portuguese, and even if we could have I am not sure how smart it would have been to tell the lady we were trying to get drunk in a monastery.

But drink we did, and toast, and toast, and toast. We toasted Brazil, we toasted cachaca, and we toasted the wolves: "Those mother fuckers better show up."

I guess now I have to explain about the wolves. See, a few years ago one of the padres at the monastery decided it would be super fun to see if he could feed the maned wolves by hand a la St. Francis of Assisi. The maned wolf is one of only three wild dog species in Brazil, and one is a fox and the other a small dog. The maned wolf is large, rare, and extremely endangered. But this priest managed to train the wild wolves in the park to eat from his hand, and every night they place food out on the terrace for the wolves. So about six shots of cachaca in, we took a picture of ourselves holding a statue of St. Francis, just because it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I prayed silently that the wolves would show tonight.

On our way to dinner, drunk and giggling down the dormitory corridor toward the dining room, we heard Melie up ahead on the terrace, "shhhhhh!!!! You guys, der ees a wolf!!!! Be quiet! der ees a wolf!!!!!!" Rob and I looked at each other, eyes bulging, and we all crouched low and crept as stealthily as we could for drunks, emerging from the corridor on to the terrace. Low and behold, there was an aluminum tray full of chicken wings (cause that's what I'd want if I were a wild wolf), and standing at the tray was a tall, long, lanky, copper colored wolf. He looked like a enormous fox with gangly legs and huge ears. I held my breath as he snatched bits of chicken and retreated swiftly to a safe distance at the edge of the terrace to crunch bones and swallow before cautiously attempting more. It was magic, sheer enchantment. Naimon, Mike and I, our cameras clicking away (luckily flash doesn't scare them off), got some amazing shots of this brave wolf, alone on the terrace with only the five of us.

After we sat, crouched, and stood frozen for minutes watching the wolf make several passes at the chicken, Mike finally said, "All right, enough of this, I am going to go save the rest of our dinner." To a bunch of drunks, this was the funniest thing he could have said, and I sputtered through laughter, "you son of a bitch!" But finally, the wolf had had enough chicken (wing sauce not hot enough?), and enough of the camera flashes, and enough of us, and he disappeared back into the black of the forest while the rest of us, awed and breathless, thanked St. Francis.

Side bar: I have found the problem with being a photo hobbyist. You are so focused on getting the shot, on preserving the moment for posterity, you don't live fully in the actual moment as it is happening. One eye is on the wolf, aware that you are now one of a small group of people on the planet who has seen this rare creature, or ever will again. It is a moment you want to be fully present for, completely engaged, just watching, imbibing, honoring. But then the other eye is focused on the camera, the settings, the focus, the zoom, hoping for that amazing shot to share with friends so they believe that you experienced this rare thing. It is a dilemma, to be sure, and sometimes I wish I could just put the camera down and experience life instead of trying to preserve it. Some moments in life are meant to be moments only, and then memories.

Later that night, after dinner and everyone had retired to their rooms, I went out on the terrace alone for one last hopeful glimpse of a wolf. No one showed up, but the tray of chicken, which was still full when our wolf was snacking, was now completely decimated. I sat on the terrace and looked up at the star littered sky, realizing for the first time that I was looking at a whole new hemisphere of stars that I had never seen before. It was a good thing I didn't have my camera.

Day 4 or The Gringo Girl and the Garim Peiros

2009-06-28T07:22:00.002-07:00

Notes on June 22, 2009

This morning at breakfast there were two new faces eating with Mike and Melie when I came downstairs, suffling sleepily. When I entered the dining room, Melie introduced me as "our adopted daughter." Awwww, schniff. It was too sweet and I felt all warm and fuzzy. Of the new guys, Rob is a proper, poised sort of character, and his friend, Naimon (awesome name, Naimon), is the soft spoken, shy one. Both are professors, traveling in Minas for a few days after a conference in Rio or Sao Paulo, I forget which. It still felt good to hear some more English, even with the considerable conversational abilities of Mike and Melie.

After breakfast, the adventure began in earnest. Mike and Melie and I decided to drive to the Minas de Passagem, a decommissioned gold mine some twenty mintues outside of Ouro Preto, on the way to Mariana. It has been turned into a tourist attraction (they charge an exhorbitant R24 to go down in). When we pulled in the parking lot a 12 year old boy immediately approached the car, and now I was introduced to hustling, Brazilian style. The kid wanted to give us a tour of the mine (for which some payment would naturally be expected), but seeing as how we had planned to pay the official mine tour guide for all of that, we couldn't justify two tour guides. Then he suggested that we pay another dude (an older guy lingering in the parking lot) to "keep an eye" on our car for us. So what, are we paying you NOT to rob us? But luckily Mike was hip to this stuff, and he was able to decline with our car and our belongings in tact. (I tell you I am just soaking in all his savvy traveler mojo). Then the kid offered to wash our car for a small fee, but Mike told him we like it dirty, which is really super savvy, because a dirty car is much more discreet in these parts. It fits in with everyone eles's dirty cars.

And then we saw the mine. So it's like a whole in the ground that is over 1000m deep. And the way you get down in this thing is to wait at the top while the tour guide fires up this huge old engine with a crank shaft which slowly starts to haul the most rickety, rackety, antique passenger mine car out of the hole on ONE, yes ONE, rope (I don't even think it was a cable). I don't think OSHA would approve this whole rig for employees, let alone tourists. But the car comes up and we all climb in, and then we notice just how steep the hill is going down into the mine, and Melie starts with, "I don like thees, Mike. I am not going to go. Will you hold me." Good job Melie. Way to play the damsel in distress. So she gets on the car (of course she did), and we get ready for Disneyworld Minas Gerais style. We start to get lowered into the mine. OMG. This thing was so slow and tame all the excitement of possibly plummeting out of control down into a mine and careening around dangerous curves a la Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom evaporated as we descended inch by jiggly inch. Still, the ONE rope holding us added a little suspense.

The mine was opened in 1719, and was mined for gold be primarily black slaves, natch. The tour was in Portuguese, and Mike was successful at translating all of it. Turns out there is a shrine to dead miners at the bottom, where people leave little bottles of nail polish or lipstick. I am still trying to figure that one out. Maybe you just leave what you have on hand? Maybe the miners were drag queens? Not sure.

Then it was time to make the slow climb back to the surface, where our tour guide finished the show by panning for gold dust, which he actually did find in the bottom of the pan. And then we headed back to the car, where the kid asked us for a ride to Mariana, where we were headed next. So Mike decided to go ahead and give this kid a ride in lieu of money. As he climbed in the back seat with me, Melie said, "Kreesteen, we 'ave your Brazilian for you." "Melie, you're fired." I officially revoked her match making priviledges out of self defense.

In Mariana, after we ditched the kid, we went to lunch at a "self service" restaurant. In Brazil, self service is the fancy Americanized way of saying buffet, and you buy your food by the kilogram. I like eating this way. The spreads are tremendous: traditional beans and rice (of course), roasted chicken, roast beef, blanched veggies of all shapes and sizes, mystery dishes, and tasty cakes. You basically pile your plate up with whatever catches your stomach's eye and then take it over to a lady with a scale, who weighs it and writes down the price for the plate. They don't even look at you funny when you are a chubby white girl with an enormous plate of food ten times the size of Brazil. I like it. There was only one wierd veggie glop that I had to spit back out on my plate, but the rest was pretty damn yummy.

After lunch we set out for the town square, and Mike and I ducked into a promising furniture shop, where I abandoned Mike and went in search of Melie. After I poked my head into yet another Baroque igreja, I sat with Melie on the steps of the church. We took off our shoes and socks and relaxed in the sun, and told each other more of our stories. It was one of those conversations that went really deep really fast, and I find life more than ironic when that happens. It feels like you've known each other for an age, even though you may only know them for a few days or hours or minutes of your life. Sometimes it seems the people we spend the most time with know us the least, and those fleeting encounters with strangers, where we have nothing to hide or lose or gain, and no history that could color their judgment and no future to smooth the way for, we feel OK to be ourselves. It was one of those conversations.

Mike eventually showed up with a new friend he'd picked up back in the furniture store. The guy was a spindly looking carpenter and had nothing better to do than to show Mike around the town square and tell him some interesting local history, like how the pedestool used to beat the slaves was right there on the square in front of the church. And sure enough, there was an iron ring where slaves were chained in a stone pilar on the green. Nothing like a little human brutality to prove to god how you worship him. "Hey look Jesus! Won't it be great to watch us whip slaves? It's so funny when they scream! And it makes us such good Christians too!" But of course, the Portugese did believe they were being good Christians, just like slave owners in Georgia or the Carribbean or where ever, because slaves were godless heathens, and they needed to be whipped for their own good after all. This kind of thing always makes me wonder: when do we give people a pass? Do we excuse the slave owners (it was the eighteenth century after all, they didn't know better), or do we condemn them (it was the eighteenth century after all, shouldn't they have figured it out by then)? But then, Bush still hadn't figured it out in 2003 so I don't know.

(All this philosopherizing is hurting my head. Where's the cachaca?)

Then the guy told Mike that he could take us to a real mine, a surface mine that is currently being worked for gems and gold. Mike was a bit wary. It was a calculated risk. After all, this could be the hustle to end all hustles. But Mike had a good feeling about this guy, and he really likes rocks, and I really like gems, so we went for it. And as we drove out of town, Melie told me how she always feels safe traveling with Mike. In all the third world, war torn, flood ravaged, western hostile countries, in all the police states and during all the dicey border crossings and logistical wranglings, she has never felt she was in true danger. "'Ee can smell danger. Eef 'ee even senses it, we are out of dat place, you know?"

I don't know the name of this mining town, but it's a place that God and everybody has forgotten about, and we park next to this giant gaping black hole in the earth. Our "guide" leads us down, we cross a makeshift wood plank bridge over a chasm (another OSHA nightmare) into the pits. There are no railings, no gates, no fences to keep small children from wandering in and falling to their deaths. There are no fences to keep adults from doing the same. Are guy starts telling us, as we descend further, how the miners have to work the land by hand (no hydraulics or dynamite) and that they can only work within certain boundaries...and a new guy, his shirt dingy, his face smeared, follows us down and shakes all of our hands. And then another guy comes, and another. And I'm thinking, "Hmmm, that's interesting. Where are all these guys coming from." And then two more show up and I am thinking, "What is this, 'let's all gawk at the gringos'?" And two more show up, and now I am thinking "Uhhhh, exit strategy?" And finally we are in the belly of the mine, almost at the bottom of the pit, and all these guys who followed us down start pulling out little white paper packets from every pocket and satchel and they open them. And inside the white packets, resting on white cotton pads, are the most lovely, clear, sparkling, vibrantly colored cut gems. And now it dawns, "They want to sell them to us."

Brief side bar while I tell the story of "Gold n Gem Grubbin'" way back in Dahlonega, GA. My sister-in-law came to visit with the family last July, and she wanted to go panning for gold and gems. So I found this place online called "Gold n Gem Grubbin." The even have this Stinky Pete looking red neck miner cartoon mascot. If they got that guy, you know it's the real deal, right? So we drove up there and paid $60 for a 5 gallon bucket and sat our asses on a stump at a sluice for three hours and sifted for rubies and emeralds and sapphires and amethysts. We made a perty good haul (all of which is still sitting uncut in forgotten drawers though).

So this mine in Minas, this man made rip in the earth we were standing in with 12 very dirty miners, this was not your leisurely day of gold n gem grubbin. This was intense, strange, disconcerting, exhilarating. These miners don't deal with outsiders often so these gems were straight from the source. I was off balance at first, my mind whirring with the competing hands and faces shoving gems under my nose and jockeying for my attention. But then I began to notice the gems: citrine, amethyst, garnet, green amethyst, blue topaz, emerald, aquamarine. And it didn't take a jeweler to notice they were very, very nicely cut, and huge! Huge like the size of peanut M&Ms or dimes. And then I listened to the prices they were quoting: R20 ($10) for a square cut amethyst the size of Texas, R25 ($13) for an oval citrine like a prenatal vitamin. And my eyes began to bulge with treasure. The problem was calming down enough to think, and add, and negotiate for the bling bling. Finally I limited myself to a few nice stones and then waited till I was safely in the car to count out my money.

Later on the drive back to Mariana, Melie teased Mike, "Wow, Mike. Dat was da biggest toureest trap ever! Dat was almost as bad as dat temple in Indonesia, remember? And I was just telling Kreesteen what a savvy guy you are traveling, and you brought us to a big tourist trap! ha ha ha!"

But I was in my own exhilarated world. This was not a tourist trap, not really. The Minas de Passagem was the tourist trap. I had just had a real Lonely Planet experience. An off-the-beaten-trail, a not-in-the-guide-book, a not-even-in-the-Lonely-Planet-guide-book, moment. This was travel. This wasn't some sanitized for western white people, consumer reports five star rating for safety and comfort, AARP endorsed for oldsters travel moment. You aren't going to find this place listed in Conde Nast or National Geographic Travel magazine. And I loved it. In fact, the more I thought about what I had just done and where I had just been, the more I realized I had caught the remote third world travel bug. And I am not sure if there is a cure.

That night I lay awake thinking of more far off, hard to access, barely traveled places. And I lay awake dreaming of treasure, and bling, and pretty necklaces and sparkly girlie stuff. And I began getting greedy and I wondered why I didn't get that oceanic emerald cut aquamarine or that sunset colored glowing citrine. I drifted to sleep scheming how to go back....no matter how unlikely it would be.

And here is the story of the miners, the garim peiros, as they are actually called: These guys hack and sift dirt from 9:00 until 2:00 every damn day. Then they cut the gems right in their shanty houses, and then they sell the gems to brokers, who then sell them to jewelers, who turn them into $300 amethyst earrings or $600 citrine rings to be sold to tourists in Belo Horizonte and Ouro Preto and Tiradentes. Then, when the day is over, these guys have nothing else to do but sit around and drink cachaca all night, until it is time to get up and start digging in the dirt again.

We'll tonight boys, the good stuff (the R2 cachaca instead of the R1 cachaca) is on us!

Day 3 or The Attack of the Quebra Molas

2009-06-28T07:22:00.001-07:00

Notes on Sunday, June 21, 2009

At 9:00 I met Mike and Melie outside their pousada two doors down from mine. Mike deserves an award for wedging my beastly suitcase in the back seat of their little clunker. The drive was pretty uneventful, with the exception of the quebra molas. Mola, in Portugese, is tooth (like molar). The verb Quebra is "to break." So quebra molas are "teeth breakers." I am referring of course, to speed bumps, which are EVERYWHERE in Brazil. I think there must be a law or something that there must be one quebra mola for every Brazilian. And these fuckers are huge. They make for an exciting and occasionally painful ride. Most of the time the speed bumps are painted with ominous yellow stripes, or there is a helpful street sign just before you encounter one. But many times there is no warning at all, and you hit the bastard at 35 miles an hour, and then everyone in the car hears the nasty "clonk" on the underside of the car and a chorus of "ooohhhhhhhh" rings out in unison as faces cringe.

It took us about three hours to reach Ouro Preto. A trip made more interesting because Melie gets motion sick. And when you combine the incessant slowing down and speeding up to survive the quebra molas, the cliff hugging curves of the mountain roads, and the constant up and down over hills and through valleys, Melie was feeling a little puky from time to time. It was kinda funny to hear her, in her Quebec accent, saying, "Oh, Mike, I don like thees. No, I don like thees." But still, you have to admire the sheer good sportingness of a woman who gets motion sick but is still willing to travel the world by plane, boat, car, motorcycle, train, whatever. She's pretty kick ass.

Ouro Preto is a mountain town with insanely steep cobble stone streets and narrow jack knife turns where only baby cars can go. We came into town from a valley road, so we had to climb in the little clunker all the way to our pousada at the top of the town. We had some serious doubts as to whether or not the little car could do it, but in the end, it prevailed bravely and we made it to our ancient pousada, The Chico Rei, in time for Mike and Melie to get the very last open room in the city. There was a film festival going on this week that none of us knew about, and the town was utterly booked up. I already had a reservation there, but it was M&M's turn to be smiled on by the travel gods today. And I am glad. It means I have my friends for another day.

And what a pousada it is! This place was built in 1770, and is one of the oldest in the city. The whole place is stuffed with antiques, including an enormous original painted corner cabinet in the dining room with the most beautiful decorative iron key whole, antique tables and chairs, wide, warped wood floor planks the color of rich dark coffee, weathered old oil paintings and ginormous floor to ceiling windows with worn stone window seats. It oozes comfy charm from floor to ceiling. It's the kind of place you want to spend a weekend with a lover. But since I'm short one lover at the moment I'll just have to pretend.

My room was was a complete gem. On the second story and at the front of the house, this room was one of the fancy rooms. The angular vaulted ceiling was made entirely of carved wood, painted white, and the view from my balcony of the Igreja Nossa Senorha do Carmo right across the street was positively enchanting. Out my other window (an enormous window that I had to hang my entire torso out in order to open and close the giant crusty old painted shutters) overlooked the red tile roofs of the western side of town. I was in pousada heaven, and the best part was that this place was only $45 a night. You can barely stay in a skanky Motel 6 for that back home. When our exhuberant host gave me the key to my room, I about fainted. This mother was huge! It was a clunky, crusty old worn metal key the length and thickness of a large pocket knife, with a worn wooden handle that Mike called an elephant club. I salivated the first time I put my 240 year old key in the 240 year old lock of my 240 year old door to my 240 year old room. (It doesn't take much to make me happy).

Once settled and refreshed, we headed out for a bite of lunch. I am a tad embarrassed to say we ate pizza, but damn, it was really, really good pizza. They don't do tomato sauce on pizza down here so far as I can tell, which means that pizza is basically a dough and cheese bomb with various toppings: pepperoni, yummy whole green olives (I have finally been fully converted to a green olive eater down here - still won't touch the black though), and onions. But since they don't do pizza sauce, they do ketchup instead. Uhh, like gag me with a chainsaw. I didn't partake of this particular travesty of condiment misuse, but we still had a lovely lunch basking in the sun on the terrace of a 250 year old restaurant and dranking our agua minerale com gas. Which reminds me, bottled water here is agua minerale, and you can get it carbonated or not. But the first time a waiter asked me if I wanted agua minerale com gas (with gas), I was like, "huh?" In the US, gas is what you put in your car, or what you have after you eat too much chili, it doesn't come in water. But then I realized that "com gas" meant sparkling water, and I was like, "Sure, I'll have gas."

After almoco (lunch) we split up for a while, and I went off to explore the town. I was of two minds about the precipitously steep streets here. On one hand I knew I was getting stellar exercise, but I began to not want to go on any downhill streets to find this architectural gem or that, because I knew I'd have to come back up. But I forced myself, and the resulting intimacy with the town was well worth the huffing and puffing. The first church I hit, Igreja Sao Francicso de Assis, is one of the most important master works of our hero sculptor Aleijadinho. His real name was Antonio Francisco Lisboa, but the nickname Aleijadinho means "little cripple." See, dude came down with leprosy or syphilis (they don't know which) and he lost his fingers and toes (total bummer). But instead of crying in his cachaca, dude strapped hammers and chisels to his stumps, and kept right on chiseling and carving the gorgeous soapstone of the region into moving and elegant works of Barroco Mineiro art. He sculpted soapstone, carved wood and left behind a huge body of work, including the graceful, cascading church front I was looking at. I paid a small fee to step inside and continued my verboten habit of taking pictures in churches that you are not allowed to take pictures in. I had to be sly about it. They kind of have a picture nazi hanging out in all the churches, so you have to have your camera ready to go for when the camera gestapo steps out of the nave. Back in Tiradentes I heard that the reason they don't let anyone take pictures inside the churches is because they keep getting robbed, and they don't want anyone to use photos of the interior to advertise the churches goods to potential thieves. I kind of thought they just wanted you to buy their post cards, which all sucked monkey fuzz, and so I clandestinely took my own photos in all these lovely igrejas.

I hit a few more lonely, humbler churches, and made an effort to cross town to the last one I wanted to visit that day: Igreja Nossa Senhora do Pilar, apparently the second most ornate church in all of Brazil,* although I am not exactly sure how you quantify such a thing. This place boasts over 400kg of gold and silver decorative work in its interior, and judging by the stunning glow of the nave, that's a lot. In front of the church I had the questionable fortune of meeting Lucia, a kind of geeky, gangly dude from the south of Brazil who spoke English in a wheezy, nasaly high pitched voice that kind of makes you want to stick your head in a toilet so you won't have to hear it. He decided to latch on to me to practice his English. I wasn't entirely keen on his company, but he offered to pay for a private tour of the church for us and then translate the Portugese to English for me. So I was game.

In the end I think Lucia successfully translated about .05% of what the guide told him. He said things like, "The church is gold because there is so much gold," and "The workers were working and there were a lot of workers." But I did find out that the theivery of churces is for real. The guide pointed out all the stuff that had gone missing, so I guess my illicit photos of church interiors might fetch a decent price on the black market. There is no honor among us thieves is there.

After the tour I was ready to shake Lucia. I walked down this street and that, he kept following like he had no where else to be. Finally I stepped into a chocolate shop hoping he might move on, but he came with me. So I decided to order some drinking chocolate for myself, and he did the same and sat with me. BTW, the hot chocolate down here is something to experience. It is dark and thick, halfway between a drink and a pudding. It gets a chocolatey skin on top and goes down thick and creamy, like a lava flow of bitter sweet warmth. But we sat in the little restaurant with wide open windows overlooking the mountains in the background (it's the kind of place you sit with a lover and I am short one lover and long on one Lucia - ugh), and chatted about where Lucia was from (Porto Alegre) and how long he was in Ouro Preto. Then I decided that this completely unromantic interlude needed to end, and I lied about going back to my pousada for a nap.

I did end up back at my pousada eventually, and I met Mike and Melie, and they invited me to go with them to a couple of the film festival movies that evening. They were all free, and even though I knew they would be in Portuguese, I figured I'd better attempt to stretch myself a little if I wanted to appear even remotely sophisitcated. We trekked to the old theater in the center of town, which of course has been converted to a charming movie theater, and I can't say I was disappointed with the selection. It was a collection of 5 short documentary films from the 1970's about social ills in Sao Paulo. One featured homeless migrant workers, another a water polution problem that remained unfixed by a local beaurocracy, another was about the deaths and injuries of always expendable low wage miners, another about people actually living on one of Sao Paulo's landfills. Pretty fascinating stuff. The second movie, which was playing outside on a huge screen erected in the Praca Tiradentes (the town square), was a horrible cheesy drama about a lowly but talented race car driver who worked for a Chevrolet dealership in Sao Paulo and was in love with his boss's hottie Brazilian girlfriend and his hottie souped up race car. It was dumb. It was cold out. We left early to go get dinner.

Dinner was not easy. I had a recommendation from my guide book for good local food joint, but I lead us on an expedition across the entire new world in search of it because the official names of the streets don't match the names the locals use and I got lost, and in the end it was closed for dinner. And the second place I picked was closed altogether. So after an hour of playing New World Explorers we found a place on the Praca that was open, and the food was good, but expensive. I got a little tipsy of one very very strong caipharina. It is a little impossible to stumble home drunk in these towns. Well, given the size of the cobble stones (which are really like cobble boulders), you will stumble, but you won't make it home. Luckily I had Mike and Melie. As we were headed home to our cozy abode, Melie said, "Wee need to find you a nize Brazilian traveler. Eef we find one on de way home, should we encourage you or stop you?"

"Encourage me Melie, definitely encourage me." But we have to do better than Lucia.

* More good stuff from Lonely Planet.

Day 2 or I am a lucky Bastard

2009-06-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

Notes of June 20, 2009

Yes my friends, the travel gods have smiled on me, big time. I could not have imagined a better stroke of luck. Last night, the bus ride to Sao Joao de Rei was as uneventful and long as the scenery leaving Rio was breathtaking. And yes, the bus hugged mountain curves with sheer drops on one side that exhilarated and terrified me at the same time. But around 4:30 the sky took on a distinctly dusky look, and I began to wonder if rain was coming. Then I remembered that I was in the southern hemisphere and that if the summer solstice was encroaching up north, the winter solstice must be thinking of doing the same down here. Duh, Keke.

As the bus approached Sao Joao around 8:00, I started to figure out my plan for the night. I didn't have a reservation at a Pousada (none of the ones I had e-mailed before I left responded) and the one I wanted to try first was a kilometer walk from the bus station. But the closer we got to the station, the more I realized this was not a neighborhood I wanted to be walking in at night towing a suitcase big enough to fit a small giraffe with a sign on my head that screams "Tourista!" Plan B: Taxi to the pousada. As I was fetching my luggage from the bus under carriage, a sharply dressed Brazilian woman who had been on the bus with me approached me and asked in broken English if I was a tourista, which I thought was pretty obvious. But soon she was asking me where I was from and she told me she has a neice that lives in Atlanta and that she enjoyed the ATL very much. "Where are you staying?" she asked. And I told her my plans to stay in Sao Joao, even though I was improvising at the moment, and that I planned to travel to Tiradentes (pronounced CHEER-a-dench) tomorrow. "Ahhh, you should come with me to Tiradentes tonight! It is much nicer to stay there than Sao Joao. Tiradentes is beautiful. I have a house there, and I can show you around. My husband is just coming to pick me up and we can take you!" And on cue, her husband appeared on the platform and she gave him the warmest hug, like the hug you give a man returning from overseas, and any niggling reservations I may have had about going with them melted away. So Virgina Wilson (the most Portugese name EVER) and her husband packed my luggage in their trunk, and me in the back seat, and drove me through the heart of Sao Joao to show me the colonial district, and then took the scenic route to Tiradentes (even though I couldn't see much in the dark), and showed me around the town (which took about ten minutes it's so little) and then drove me to the first pousada I picked. Virginia went in with me to inquire about a room. When there were no vacancies there, she drove me to the next pousada, and then next, where finally there was a spare little room on the first floor waiting for me. Her husband brought in all my luggage, she negotiated R20 off the room price for me, told the host to take good care of me because now I was her good friend, kissed me on both cheeks and told me to have a wonderful time in her country (and be careful in Rio) before disappearing out the door into the chill Minas evening. Jeeze. Do we even know the meaning of hospitality in the US? At all?

In the morning, I woke to a charming breakfast (cafe amanha) of fresh papaya, cheese and random mystery buscuits, along with my first taste of Brazilian coffee. Damn. Just Damn. Dark, sweet, and with fresh cows milk, creamy and full of flavor.

So now a little about the town I am in: I took a bus almost due north of Rio into the state of Minas Gerais (General Mines). In the early 18th century, the Portugese began extracting gold and gems in earnest from Minas, and with the growing mineral wealth came population growth. Mining towns like Sao Joao de Rei, Tiradentes and Ouro Preto grew near the mines, and became showcases of the wealth the region generated. Black slaves were brought from Angola in Africa and elsewhere in Brazil to do the dirty work (quite literally) of working in the mines, while the Portugese enjoyed the fruits and luxuries of their labor after the majority of wealth was sent back to Portugal.*

So why did I want to come to Minas? Well, I have this book called 1000 Places to See Before You Die, and the colonial mining towns of Minas are on the list. The Baroque architecture is acclaimed, and one of the towns is a UNESCO World Heritage site, so I was pretty much burning to see it once I read about it and nothing was going to stop me (except swine flu). So my first venture out in the morning took me into a cobble stone clad streetscape in Tiradentes with hills and single story stucco houses culminating in the Igreja Matriz de Santo Antonio. The church was designed by this dude named Aleijadinho (pronounced a-LAY-ja-jeen-yo), the Michaelangleo of Brazil for his Baroque masterpieces. I'll explain more about this guy later, but for now, let me just say the church looks like a gold bomb exploded in there. It is intense and overwhelming, teetering between over adorned and pleasantly ornate. It has this multi colored pipe organ (which still works) that was made in Portugal and brought to the town in pieces by donkey in 1798. This is a trippy detail when you realize how mountainous the region is, and just how much stuff MUST have been brought here by donkey from the coast, AFTER if was shipped for months across the Atlantic. And then there's this other church, called Igreja Nossa Senorha Rosario Dos Petros (Our Lady Rosario of the Rocks). This place was built by and for the black slaves, but because they slaves mined during daylight hours (all of them), they had to build it all at night.

Virginia told me that 20 years ago, Tiradentes was in complete ruins. But the director of a Tele Novela, the Brazilian version of a soap opera, decided to use Tiradentes as a location for his soap, and a resurgence of interest in the town saved it from ruin. Now it is a rich people's getaway, kind of like Santa Fe, NM, and wealthy people from Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte have bought up vacation homes there, causing a bit of tension with the locals who have been pushed to the outskirts. I am always amazed at social dynamics, which seem to be the same no matter where you are.

As I strolled to the town square, I was stopped dead by a row of horse drawn carrigaes. These were clearly for tourists (the vast majority of whom are Brazilian), but they were unlike any horse drawn carriages I had seen before. These were not the period perfect horse and buggies you see in Central Park, or the historic reproductions you see in Charleston, SC and Savannah. Here was a row of carriages with a distinctly, well, Warner Brothers vibe to them. The horses wore harnesses of fuschia pink and bluejay blue and sunshine yellow, with cutesy plumes on the crowns of their bridles, and they pulled chintsy looking carriages bedecked with Hello Kitty and Woody Woodpecker (who is apparently all the rage down here) stickers. This one poor horse, his head down in shame, sported a floof of pink feathers on his head and pulled a Hello Kitty bedecked carriage. Would you be happy if that was you? I don't think so. And in the saddles of others rode the illustrious likes of blow up Spidermans and Sponge Bobs. But the best was when another horse rounded a cornder with a fluffy dog, the real deal, riding the horse of all fours. No joke. Every time I crossed paths with this furry Lone Ranger and his Tonto, I took a picture. The proud dog gallantly astride his completely humiliated horse.

I crossed town to a beautiful 18th century public fountain originally erected for drinking, washing clothes and watering horses, and I offered to take pictures of a Brazililan couple. I was practicing my Portugese numbers with them: "Um, dois, tres," click. And then I spotted a couple sitting nearby with the same guide book I was carrying. I thought they might speak English, but I approached them attempting Portugese. (Thank god Rachel taught me a few useful phrases, like "where is the bathroom?" "how much does this cost?" and all the proper greetings before she left). They responded in English, and now my luck was about to change, for the even better. Mike and Melie are Canadians. Mike, an Anglophone from Vancouver Island, and Melie a Quebecois from, well, Quebec. The two were traveling here for two weeks as a sort of tenth anniversary (they aren't really married though, just "living in sin," according to Mike). Mike speaks fluent Portugese (more on that later), and Melie is pretty good herself with the language. Once more I am cursing my monolingual ass. We fell into talking and found we had similar plans to go to Sao Joao for a while that afternoon, and we made a pact to meet a little later on and drive there together for lunch (M&M have a car). No bus for me!

So we drove the thirty minutes to Sao Joao, yammering the entire way about travel and politics and domestic social concerns. Mike and Melie are each about 4 years older than I am, but it feels as if they have lived generations more of experiences in their world travels. My jaw was dragging behind the car the whole way each time they told me a new and even more incomprehensible story, like the year they spent in the Amazon working for Doctors Without Borders, or Mike's time in Angola doing the same, and in Zimbabwe after the flooding, and in Tanzania, etc. I was in awe, and I couldn't hide it, no matter how uncool I looked with my eyes popping and my "golly jeepers" tone of voice and my tongue wagging.

After our pleasant lunch in Sao Joao, and a jaunt around the town, we returned to Tiradentes and split up for awhile. I thought that might be the last I saw of them, but Tiradentes is not at all big, and we ran into each other (usually I was taking a picture of the dog on the horse when Mike spotted me). We made plans to meet again for dinner. Melie had met a guy in a gallery who recommended a snooty restaurant by the chuch, but when we hoofed up there at 6:30, the sign on the door said it was closed until 7:30. So we headed back down the hill and decided to grab a drink, and I had my first ever caipirinha (KAI-pa-reen-ya). This is a marvelous thing. They take limes, and smash them with sugar, and then pour in a shit-load of cachaca (ca-SHA-sa), the potent liqor made from sugar cane that all of Brazil is enamoured of. The cheapest stuff, the rot gut, is cheaper than water, which explains whey everyone drinks it at the slightest provocation. But this drink, this caipirinha, is a thing of beauty, tart and sweet and limey, you are three sheets before you know what's happened to you. Nice. We returned to the snooty place, which at 7:30 still wasn't open according to the waiter who opened the door. Melie, getting a little miffed, told the guy he should change his sign. "Well you should get a reservation," came the reply, after a thourough looking over of our sloppy attire. Mike dragged Melie away, mouth agape, a scowl forming, before she could say anything else.

At dinner, Restaurant Plan B, I asked them to take me to Ouro Preto with them in the morning since they were headed there too. It was a bit forward of me, being well conditioned not to impose myself on anyone and to be paranoid about being an inconvenience, but it was time for those crappy bits of self depreciation to leave me, and I found some balls and asked. (Yes mom, I offered gas money). And I am so glad I did. The next day, the good fortune and the adventure only got better.

*A lot of the history is taken from the Lonely Planet guide book, which kicks ass. Don't leave home without it. (No, they didn't pay me for that, but I want them to).

Day 1 or Return of the Savvy Traveler!

2009-06-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

Notes on June 19, 2009

Ok, so like the second I step off the plane onto the jetway, every single Rio airport employee is wearing a surgical mask. Everyone. In the airport, more masks, up the ramp to customs, more masks. "Am I on the set of Outbreak II starring Zach Efron and Lindsey Lohann or something?" And we are given this H1N1 symptom form to fill out what symptoms we've had in the last 10 days, because of course, we are all going to tell the truth, right? And I'm starting to get a little nervious and think: "uhhh, maybe Mom was right, maybe I should've brought a surgical mask. Am I going to die?" But later I learned that the Brazilians were wearing them to protect themselves from the Americans getting off the plane and if I'm gonna get it, I've already got it. So I'm going to live it up here in Brazil before I die.

Once you are past customs, you come down this long hallway, at the end of which are a row of booths for different taxi companies, and all 7 ladies sitting behind each of the plexi glass windows start yelling "Senora! Senora! Taxi, taxi!!!" So I pick the green booth, because I like green, and I fork over the money for the cab to the bus station, and my booth lady is kind enough to inform me that I don't have to tip the driver: "No pay more! No teep!" Ah! O'brigada nice taxi booth lady!

The taxi ride in to Rio was a bit like being in one of those gas powered race cars at the Mario Andretti speedway, zipping in and out, with motorcycles squeezing through the teensiest spaces between cars. It would have been cool if there had been a seatbelt. And then I saw my first glimpse of the favelas (slums) on either side of the highway. I am not sure there is anyway for me to write about them without sounding like a sheltered white woman, so I'll just spill my cuturally ignorant impressions. First, they were fascinating. These are not houses, or even shantys, or shacks. They are hollow clay brick ROOMS stacked on each other like duplo blocks, with corrigated metal roofs floating five feet above an open top floor, brightly colored laundry running between the stacks of houses in every crevice, half finished top stories with two walls built and the others waiting languidly and indefinitely to be finished. Kids, dogs, bicycles, futbols (soccer balls) moved around and intersected with each other in the dirt streets. And despite the debate of the cultural ethics of touring favelas, I found myself wanting to go anyway. We'll see.

It was my first opportunity to practice my Portugese, so I asked the cabbie, "Onde e O Cristo Rodentor." Everyone knows the symbol of Rio, the giant statue of Christ high on a hill above Rio, overlooking the city and the harbor and surrounding mountains. The Cabbie pointed straight ahead, but it was lost in a bank of morning fog. I'll have to wait until I get to climb it to really see it.

But now the adventure really begins: So I land at the bus station, and immediatly when I get out with my obnoxiously large luggage (I am already determined to go back to traveling light from now on), the taxi drivers start competing for your business. But I had a mission: to buy a bus ticket to Sao Joao de Rei, my first destination in the colonial mining state of Minas Gerais (General Mines). I approached the first window I saw and inquired, "Passage para Sao Joao por favor," and I caught just enough of what he was saying to know I needed a different bus company, and he pointed amorphously over his head somewhere. I looked up and saw steps, and figured I must head up. The Rio bus station is not a place you want to linger long looking like a lost white tourist. So I put on my best determined looking "I know exactly what I am doing because I am a savvy traveler face" and began hunting through the labrynth that is the Rio Bus station for the right bus company. Finally. I found it. Relief. But alas, the next bus to Sao Jaoa was at 2:30, and it was only 10:00. Anxiety.

So then I'm all, "There is no way I am spending four hours in the Rio bus station, not only because I don't want to become fresh meat for pick pocketers, but also because hey, I have four hours in Rio! I'm going to go see something! So I pay $5 for a Gatorade ($5???) and pull all my crap (did I mention I am going back to traveling light after this?) off to a bench to get my bearings and plan. I pull out my guide book, (BTW, the Lonely Planet guide book is da bomb, and when I get fired from teaching--as I am perpeturally convinced I will for some dumb thing I do, it is just a matter of time--I am going to go beg them to hire me). I scoured the pages for something close by (cheap cab ride) and interesting, and my eyes alight on the Feira Nordestina (The northern market). With a plan in hand, I now had to figure out what to do with my luggage, and I found a little black room, the front of which was covered in black cage wire, and I saw all the luggage just sitting there behind the cage. I asked the guy how much for three hours, and then reluctantly handed over my suitcase. I almost asked him how much more to make sure my suitcase would not have been opened and rummaged through when I got back (dumb ass here forgot her luggage lock), but I restrained myself.

Now I was ready to haggle with the cabbies. I asked the first one how much to the Feira: "Trente Reals" (pronounced "Hey-ice").
Me: (holding my chin and shaking my head) Trente? Hmmm. Nao, brigada.

$15 is too much for two blocks, so I go up to the next guy, and he says R25. Done. I am such the bargainer. I saved $2.50!

Now let me tell you about the Feira Nordestina. It is basically a Brazilian version of a German beer festival. I got there at 10:30, when the 600+ stalls were just opening and the market was rousing from its sleep. They sell everything here, from spices and sides of beef and pork to clothes and hammocks and shoes and CDs. I tripped when I heard a dub of Rihanna's "Umbrella" in Portugese. Apparently on weekends this place is a 24 hour party, with bands and beer and cachasa flowing freely. Feeling a tad peckish, I saw what looked like kabobs with white rectangles of grilled mystery food skewered on them. I asked the woman if it was cheese, and it was, and I can never turn down cheese, especially if it is grilled with a nice char on it and spiced with oregano. It was tangy, like a lively mozzarella, and it just goes to show that you can never go wrong with cheese on a stick no matter where you are on the planet.

After a bit more exploring of the butcher booths and exotic, never seen before fruits and veg, I needed some lunch, so I got roped into a restaurant in the food court area. I could not read a damn thing on the menu, so I just pointed to the cheapest Fruta de Mar (seafood) dish and prayed. It was called camarao ao alho. I figured I could deal with mystery seafood better than mystery meat. Imagine my immense relief when they brought me a plate of nothing more than peel and eat shrimp, heads still on, stringy antenai still flapping, looking up at me with lifeless, stone dead black eyes. But damn were they good. They swam in butter and oil and were topped with toasted garlic and parsley and some tangy flavor I couldn't place. I made a royal mess of myself, getting oil everywhere so that I had to lick my fingers and smack my lips, savoring the flavor. It was only then that I read in my guidebook that Brazilians are not lax about table manners, and the stares I got, which I assumed were because I am white, were probably because I was eating like Animal from the Muppets. Way to represent, Kristin.

And the cab back to the bus station only cost me R6, so even with all my savvy bargaining, I still got taken for a ride, and not the good kind either. But that afternoon my bus left for Sao Joao with me on it, and I had survived a few hours in Rio on my own, and I think I'm in the clear on swine flu, so I wasn't feeling too bad about my skillz.

T Minus 0 or "Please Don't Go Keke!"

2009-06-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Notes on June 18, 2009

So a few weeks ago I had the following conversation with my brother about my upcoming trip.

Bro: "So when do you leave for Mexico?"
Me: "Uh...Brazil..."
Bro: "Whatever, it's all the same."
Me: (thinking) Uhh, totally different continents, totally different hemispheres, but whatever.
Me: "June 18th."
Bro: "Mom's worried you'll get swine flu."
Me: "Uh...that's in Mexico."
Bro: "Same thing."
Me" (thinking) Uhh, I'm closer to Mexico here in Atlanta than I will be in Brazil, but whatever.
Me: "Uhhh...well, I leave for Mexico June 18th."

Of course, this whole conversation took place with the full knowledge that my brother knows exactly where Brazil is and where it isn't. But he's a Republican and all Republicans think that anything south of the Rio Grand is Mexico and all people living south of the Rio Grande are Mexicans (including Puerto Ricans). Democrats just wish Texas was still part of Mexico. I wonder how Rodrigo and my Ecuadoran friend like it when white people inform them they are actually Mexican.

When it looked like I wasn't going to be going to Brazil (courtesy of the tourist visa SNAFU), my brother did his best to console me:

Bro: Come on, cheer up. Brazil's not that great anyway. They don't even have tacos.
Me: (crickets chirping...)
Bro: Listen, we'll take you to a Mexican restaurant and get you a sombrero. It'll be just as good.
Me: Only if I can get a frozen margharita too. With an umbrella.

And when the trip was back on (courtesy of me changing my flight like Mr. Consulate Bunghole suggested), he tried to bribe me to give it up altogheter and go to the Nati for a month instead.

Bro: (via e-mail) Seriously. Scrap this Rio de Brazilianero crap and just come up to the QC. It will be just as hot up here, I can set you up with a far more comfortable vacation, after all, I've got 212 cable channels, of which like 30 are Mexican. You can plant yourself on the couch for a 468 hour marathon of Univision if you like, -better than being there! I'll even cook you my signature mexican dish -Nachos de Fuentes or even Chipotle Muchos Burritos if you like. DONE!
Me: tempting...but...no.

Yes, tempting as faux Mexico in Cincinnati sounds, even with the added incentives of chillin' with the nieces and the culturally insensitive bro ;) I am goin to stick with plan A (or plan A3c rather), and go to Brazil. My brain has been camping out at the airport waiting for the rest of me to get there for the last four weeks.

My mom is particulary solicitious for my comfort and health while away. Now I must provide a disclaimer here: I love my mama (no doubt she's reading this so I have to get that in), but in the past four weeks I have had the following admonishments from her:

Mom: Do you want me to send you a surgical mask in the mail?
Me: For what? to wear?
Mom: (As though this were obvious) Yeah, they have swine flu down there too. It's everywhere.
Me: (thinking) uhhh...including right here in Atlanta maybe?
Me: Mom, I'm not going to wear a surgical mask in Brazil for pete's sake! You wouldn't!
Mom: Oh yes I would!!!

Mom: (via e-mail) Do you have a whistle for Brazil?
Me: (thinking) Uhhhhh. I'm supposed to carry a whistle around my neck, like I'm a football coach on a tour of South America? Or because me just screaming my lungs out if I get in trouble doesn't work down there? In Switzerland they yodle for help, but in Brazil you have to use a whistle?

Mom: Have you seen the movie "Taken"? (It's about a girl who gets kidnapped while traveling).
Me: (crickets chirping...)

She even cajoled my aunt into calling me two days ago to remind me to get all my vaccinations (which only work if you get them four weeks before you go, and I didn't), and the yellow fever and typhoid and malaria and all that are for the Amazon, which I am not going to get to this time. I guess I'm going to get swine flu after all.

Mom: Be careful when you get into taxis.
Me: Mom, am I putting grey hairs on your head or something???
Mom: Yeah.

But really, I have to say, despite the incessant fussing, I am lucky that my family apparently wants me around, and alive, and in general good health. But my idea of pre-travel illness prevention is grab some Purell (which I forgot) and to pop an Airborne. So I guess I'll try not to get myself jacked up while I am in this clearly 7th world country that is Mexico, oops I mean Brazil, where they aren't even civilized enough to have doctors or bandaids or tacos.

T Minus 15 or Cluster#&*% at the Consulate

2009-06-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

Notes on June 3, 2009

I have done the impossible...I have procured a Brazilian tourist visa.

What do you call it when you send an application (which includes your precious passport) via mail to the consulate in Miami, for five weeks you nurse a simmering panic that you haven't gotten your visa in the twelve day turn around time (let alone your passport back). You try calling the Miami consulate (no one EVER answers), the consulate website and the consulate phone message provide you with conflicting details on what to include in your application, then you finally get your passport and application returned in the mail with a denied stamp because you should have applied to the Atlanta consulate (which didn't have an operational visa office at the time you applied to Miami). So you call the Atlanta consulate (where no one EVER answers), you skip out early from work and drive down to the consulate to apply in person only to get there 30 minutes after they closed to the public, and the man behind the counter is being a complete bung hole, and you really want to scream at him "Hey buddy, I'm trying to go to your country to spend money, and if you don't want me to, fine! I'll go to Saskatchewan for five weeks and spend money there! So um, there!" But instead you rearrange your face so you have that, "Hey mister, I'm about to cry mister so please take pity on me and pull some strings and get me a visa so I don't turn into the ugly white lady who unleashes a torrent of culturally insensitive obcenities at you." But he still insists on being a sphincter and turns you away with no visa and tells you to apply via the website (which you already tried and couldn't because it hasn't been working for two days) and wait to be assigned an official appointment time with the consulate. So then you go scrambling to R&R's to fill out the online application (which you could never have filled out on your own because the whole frickin' thing is in Portu-frickin'-gese), and request an appointment and make plans to call in sick to work the next day so Rodrigo can GO to the consulate with you and pull some strings to get you an appointment -- the LAST open appointment before my flight leaves -- and you wait, barely breathing, while Rodrigo attempts to schmooze the same prick who was behind the desk the day before.

You call it a clusterfuck, that's what you call it.

But wait, it's not over. So you go to the consulate on the day of your appointment with a $150 money order, per the website, and the new sphincter behind the counter tells you the MO is for the wrong amount. "Well, how much is it supposed to be for?" you ask. "$130," comes the reply. "Oh, well at this point I don't care about the extra $20, I just need the visa because my flight leaves in like a week." "No, we have to have exactly $130. We won't see you today. Change your flight," comes the reply.

WTF?!?!? Change my flight? What's wrong with you? You can't just tell someone to change their flight like a waiter tells you to order the shrimp because they are out of the mahi mahi. You Tourist Visa Nazi!!!! So guess what I did, just guess:

I changed my flight. So now I am leaving on the 18th, not the 4th, and I had yet ANOTHER appointment at the consulate, and I did get a visa at long, long, friggin' long last. Because if they hadn't given me one, I was prepared to go all T-Rex up in there for real.

T Minus 9 days or The Exit Strategy

2009-05-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

Notes on 5/25/09

So this past winter, amid panic attacks over incessant testing and half finished lesson plans that I was supposed to turn in but never did, I mulled over which destination I wanted to run screaming to this summer, cause damn, after my first year of teaching, I wanted to be anywhere that didn't have an over abundance of mind-numbing cinderblock construction and grotesquely hormonal teenagers. I ruminated on another hiking trip -- across England maybe? Nahhh, too much exercise at the moment for my slug-like, sleep deprived carcass. I meditated on that longed for trip to Chambodia to see the Buddhist temple of Angor Wat, with perhaps a jaunt to Bali to tread in Liz Gilbert's well traveled footsteps and meet my own Casanova? Nahhh, too much planning for my gelatinous brain to tackle at this point in the year. Then my good friend Rachel stepped in with an offer: "Why don't you come to Brazil with Rodrigo and I this summer."

Me: Really?
Rachel: Yeah, why not?

Truthfully, I could think of a few good reasons why not:

Me: Well, I'm kind of a solo traveller. I like to go off and get myself lost or in trouble on a whim and not have anyone around to witness my stupidity. I don't anyone to cramp my style.

Rachel: Oh, well you can go off by yourself whenever you want. There are all kinds of great places to hike in the mountains around Iuna (Rodrigo's hometown), with waterfalls and natural swimming pools.

Me: (thinking) Mountains? Waterfalls? Trails? Hmmm...

Rachel: And we're thinking of a trip to Rio, and to the beach in Vitoria, and up the coast to Bahia to a nature reserve.

Me: (thinking) Parking my butt on a beach? Partying in Rio? Exotic nature adventure? Hmmm..

Me: Ok..., but I don't want to cramp your style either. I don't want to be a third wheel or anything.

Rodrigo: You can always get a fourth when we're down there.

Me: (thinking, after accidentally swallowing too much beer) A fourth? Mocha skinned, dark haired, chocolate eyes....

Rachel: Kristin? Earth to Kristin...

Me: So, when do we leave?

Rachel is the gal with whom I have spent this first year of teaching incomprehensibly oblivious freshmen, making emergency runs to Moe's to consume vast quantities of queso dip and tortilla chips at the end of harrowing days of herding kids, and mindlessly hoovering cheap candy (the stuff we buy for the students, no less) whenever we were compulsively driven to emotional eating by fourteen year olds who seem to have a genetic inability to bring a pencil to class. "Really? No pencil? Where exactly did you think you were coming when you got on the bus today?" (Yes, 15 students cavalierly announcing that they don't have ANYTHING to write with when you tell them to take out their notebooks WILL drive you to eat butter flavored Crisco from the can if that is the only fat you can find. Ok, I exaggerate a tad, but not much.)

I've known Rach since my days in Grad School at Agnes Scott. She is a fellow memeber of the Black Ring Mafia. She has this shoulder length hair the perfect shade of strawberry blond, like berry juice tinted it after the sun kissed it, and she has these teal tourmaline colored eyes, the kind of crazy shade you can only get from fake contacts. Her husband, Rodrigo, is the classic Brazillian hottie, his only weakness: an impressive addiction to playing FIFA Soccer on Xbox. 90% of the time when I invade their apartment, he is mid-game, beer in hand. Sweet.

And so it is that with R&R (as they shall henceforth be know), I will make my first ever venture into the southern hemisphere on June 4th. I have been frantically purchasing new luggage, a new hot pink swimsuit with ample fabric (I look like a genetically modified extra large raspberry - there will be no Ipanema Beach butt floss for this heifer), sun screen, and wiskey to bring Rodrigo's father. Maybe I should get an extra bottle to bribe someone to be my "fourth."

Post Script

2008-04-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

BTW, I had a grand time in Santiago! The day I returned from Muxia, as I walked back into town from the bus station, I saw Roberto and Elainie sitting in a cafe! and they were staying in my pension with Pepe and Maria! And Joe had arrived too! For the next two days I took walking tours (including the rooftop of the cathedral - wicked!), and ate dinner with our little family and went to mass.

At mass they swung the botafumeiro! It is the largest incense burner in Europe, it takes eight priests to pull the ropes and that thing skys from one end of the cathedral transept to the next at almost 70kmph, shooting practically parallel with the vaulted ceiling and smoking away as it swings. It supposedly has a religious purpose, but I think it really was traditionally used to fumigate the stinking pilgrims (we still stink today). What a sight.

And I am now home and back in the land of yellow pollen and highway traffic trying to adjust to the time and to driving and to television. I have woken up from naps a few times quite disoriented, not recognizing my home and wondering which friggin' albergue I was in. I am happy to report that my VC seems to be clearing up, but my feet are still feeling like they were pounded with a meat tenderizer. I might be headed to the podiatrist after all.

Thank you again to everyone who followed my journey and commented, sent me e-mails, or just read along for the ride.

Also, stay tuned for pictures! I will post them on this blog (embedded in the text) and also a link to the whole gallery at flickr.com soon.

There is one last thing you can do for me. If you like this blog, e-mail jan@travelgirlinc.com (Travel Girl Magazine) and tell her to read it!

Muchas Gracia y Buen Camino!

Day 41 or Finis!

2008-04-09T21:09:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 41, March 5, At Land's End

This morning I took my sweet and juicy clementines and pastry and climbed to the highest point on the eastern side of the peninsula and watched the sun rise on a new chapter in my life, wondering what the next road will bring.

Weeks ago I met an Italian girl, Sara, and I asked her why she was doing the Camino. ¨Lots of reasons...but, maybe some I don´t know yet,¨ she answered quietly. I don't imagine I know all the reasons I did this Camino either, and I wonder if weeks from now, when I am home and trying to find a job and paying the bills and trying to figure out what to do next, that new reasons will appear along with my new way.

Remember in The Last Crusade when Indiana Jones was trying to find the Holy Grail, and the last task he faced was to leap across a canyon. There was no apparent way across, no bridge, no rope to swing on, no place to attach his whip. And he realized he must make a leap of faith. He must believe, and completely commit to that belief, that the way would appear.

I don't know why, but sometimes in life we are called to completely leave the path we are on before we know what the new path will be, or even that there is one at all. Some might call this crazy, irresponsible, foolish. Others my call it brave. It doesn't really matter either way. The point is that sometimes, you just have to jump without seeing the bottom, because it is impossible to remain where you are. This is both crazy and brave. But the old way is untenable, and even though you have no clue what the new way is, or where it is, the hardest thing in the world is to muster the faith to believe it will appear. But I believe it always does.

We each hold the key to our own prisons.

And with that I leave you with the words of Marianne Williamson, printed in the back of my guidebook (but the guidebook author can't take all the credit, cause I knew I wanted to quote this before I saw that he had!)

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is out Light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn´t serve the world.
There´s nothing enlightened about shrinking,
So that other people won´t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us.
It´s not just in some of us; it´s in everyone.
And as we let our light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

Finis

Day 40 or At El Mar

2008-04-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 40, March 4, Santiago to Muxia

This morning I wanted to take the 7:45 bus to Muxia on the Atlantic coast. It is traditional to go to Finisterre, which was believed in Medieval times to be the end of the earth (hence the Latin name Finisterre), and swim in the ocean, watch the sunset over the horizon, and burn some of your stinking, raggedy clothes from the Camino. Legend says that after you perform this ritual burning, you will be reborn a new person.

But several weeks ago I met a German guy who had been "living on the Camino" for a few years now, and he recommended that I go to Muxia instead if I was only going to have time for one. Muxia, he told me, was less touristy and even more beautiful, so my decision was made: Muxia it is.

But when I arrived at the bus station at 7:00am (supposedly 45 minutes early), I found out it was actually 8:00am (I was fifteen minutes late). How was this possible? Spain had had a time change last Sunday, and I knew nothing about it. And suddenly, so much was explained. The time change explained why I didn't see Peter and the gang in the square last night at 9:00 (because it was actually 10:00 when I was there), or why there was no pilgrim mass at noon when I arrived in Santiago yesterday, or why everyone in the albergues these last few days seemed to be getting up insensitively early, or why two nights ago I got locked out of the albergue at only 10:00 (it was actually 11:00) and I had to pound on the door and ring the bell for ten minutes before two people, who looked really pissed and sleepy, came to let me back inside.

So I missed my bus to Muxia, but there was another at 4:30 that afternoon, and this gave me time to walk back to town kind of re-enter it again, this time on my own. I noticed immediately the vibrant pace of this city, not too fast, not too slow. It is, without a doubt, my favorite town on the entire Camino. Santiago is friendlier than Pamplona, prettier than Logrono, more intimate than Burgos, more welcoming than Astorga, and even more romantic than Leon. I could not have imagined a better destination if I were inventing it myself.

I ran into Renate and her husband Peter, a German couple I had eaten dinner with a few nights ago, and they told me about a walking tour they were about to take so I hurried and signed up and went with them.

At lunch I ate an entire plate of traditional Galician pulpo, octopus, all by myself. Swimming in bright green olive oil and seasoned with salt, garlic and paprika, this dish is growing on me. It was lovely. I thought again of Liz Gilbert as she sat on the floor of her apartment in Rome eating fresh asparagus and reading an Italian newspaper. She could hear her ex husband's judgement and condemnation in her head. She imagined him wondering why she destroyed her marriage for some Italian vegetables and a newspaper. And again I smiled at just how many of my experiences paralleled hers. Because I too could hear my ex wondering how and why I torpedoed everything in my life to eat a plate of squidgy looking octopus tentacles and drink a glass of white wine all alone in Spain. But I smiled and I chinked my glass of wine against my water glass and toasted myself and the fact that I had the courage to take a sledge hammer to my entire life in the space of two years, from where I worked to what I did to where I lived and who I was married to for exactly this, this plate of strange and slightly scary seafood and a piece of Galician cheese cake.

And at 4:00 I returned to the bus station and took the two hour ride, stopping in every hamlet and town, to Muxia. I found a place to sleep (a little old lady accosted me and asked if I needed "habitacion", a room, and I asked her how much and she said 15 euros, so I was in.

She pointed me in the direction of El Mar, the ocean, and in no time I was clamoring over the rocky coastline. I wanted to find a spot on the rocks to watch the sunset. This coastline is all enormous rocks and boulders, no sand, no beach. It is one of these coastlines you have to climb on. I scrambled along on the rocks, looking for the right spot, my spot. I laughed when I realized that now would be a perfect time for my evil rock climbing boots, because this terrain was actually rough and I was starting to break a sweat, but I kept going, further and further along the coastline out to the tip of the peninsula.

I saw bell towers in the distance, and I realized immediately they must be Virgen de la Barca, the Virgin of the Boats, a church that Ana (Salad Oil Massage Ana) had told me I must see if I went to Muxia. So I scrambled further thinking that there had to be an easier way to get to the church than climbing over these rocks. And then I laughed at the irony of this observation, noting how I seem to like to take the hard way when someone else has already paved a path, and indeed when I got almost to the church I saw the flagstone footpath above me on the ridge.

I reached the church, it's lovely sandstone glowing in orange light from the dusky horizon. The only sadness was that there was no one to take my picture. And the great happiness was that there was no one there to take my picture. I was almost completely alone on this one kilometer stretch of coastline. Solitude. Perfect solitude.

I found my spot on a large boulder jutting out over the sea, sat down, took off my shoes, my socks, and waited for the tears to come. And of course they did. This ending was so bitter sweet and final. So poignant and imbued with significance for me. I found a small stone nearby. I held the stone in my hands and thought for a while, and then on the stone I placed my ex, and each member of his family, one by one. On the stone I put shame, embarrassment, humiliation, exposure and guilt. On the stone I put fear and apologies, insecurity and doubt. And then through watery, heavy tears I said to the stone, "You can go now, you can go now, you can go now. I need for you to go now." I stood and threw the stone as hard as I could into the sea. It bounced off a boulder and fractured, the fragments skipping across the surface of the water before they sank to the bottom.

I sat back down on my rock and blew my nose on my sock (cuz, where else was I going to go with it), and then laughed at myself for the ridiculousness of blowing my nose on my sock. And the tears ceased. I was finished crying (at least for now), and I felt the need to weep escape my body.

I sat with my chin in my hand on the rock, like Rodin's The Thinker, not thinking much of anything at all really, but watching the waves break and spray against the rocks, watching the crabs and fish and urchins scuttle about in the tide pools formed in the crevices of the boulders. I sat until the sun sank below the horizon, throwing flares of electric pinks, lightening yellows and tangerines into the sky, illuminating the azure waves in front of them.

Day 39 or Saint James, Field of Stars

2008-04-02T12:42:00.001-07:00

Notes on Day 39, April 3, Arco do Pino to Santiago de Compostela

Here's an amusing little thought I have meditated on during the Camino: the meaning of my name. My Dad had told me years ago, and Corina confirme that my last name means a little calf in German. My first name, Kristin, is a derivation of Christ, and so means "anointed one."

I will spare you the details of my walk today; you have heard it all before. But my mood on entering the city was hard to pinpoint. At first I was glad to be walking alone. I didn't want to be with anyone else when I entered the city and saw the Cathedral. I wanted that experience to be solitary and personal. And my guidebook suggested I create an air of detachment so as not to be irritaed by the droves of tourists and school kids that might be making the one day trek into the city.

But I was so successful at creating this detachment, and so focused on my intentions of solitude, that I was actually bringing myself down. When I passed Mount Joy, so named because it is the hill that overlooks the city and gives the peregrina her first look at the Cathedral towers on her way into town, I didn´t feel joy at all, and I didn't even walk up to the monument to take in the supposedly wonderful views of the city. I was too weary and too ready to be arrived already.

I ran into a German guy, obviously a pilgrim, but without his pack, who saw me and said, "You are almost there. Only 30 minutes now and you are finished," and he walked on. This news was heartening. But then he doubled back a few minutes later and offered to show me into the city. He told me he was staying at a great little pension, literally across from the Cathedral, for only 15€ a night. He could show me this place, if I wanted, and where the pilgrim office is so I could get my Compostela (certificate of pilgrimage completion). So I said OK and Eduard, my new tour guide into Santiago, chatted merrily about how he was glad to help out and how he had been helped so many times along the Camino, how he had arrived a few days ago and had already been to the coast (Finisterre) and ritualistically burned some of his hiking clothes.

His energy, which was vibrant and positive (no doubt owing to the fact that he had already arrived and was no longer humping a 15 kilo pack) rubbed off on me, and I found my excitement growing as we entered the old quarter and I was happy not to be alone afterall. We rounded a corner and I had my first view of the Cathedral from the lonely northern portal. I felt the lump swell in my throat and the pricking feeling at the corners of my eyes. But I barely had time to take it in we were moving so fast.

We descended the steps under the Archbishop's palace where a street musician was playing a haunting tune on bagpipes (again a traditional instrument for this celtic area), and emerged out in front of the famous west facade. I had just enough time to look in wonder, even as I followed Eduard quickly and dutifully across the square, before we turned the corner again and he showed me the pension and the pilgrim office. And then he left me with instructions to come back to the pension in the afternoon when the hospitalera arrived.

So now I had the time, even though I still had my pack on and I stank and wanted to shower and just sit, to return to the church and take in this bold statement that is the Cathedral of Santiago.

I walked up the dramatic stairwell and entered the church. There are some rituals you are supposed to perform upon arriving. You are supposed to place your hand in the Tree of Jesse, the marble carving of Christ's family tree in the base of the Portal of Glory (the masterwork of Maestro Mateo begun in 1168). Eight centuries of pilgrims have worn finger holes in the marble.

You are supposed to knock your head against that of the stone efigy of Maestro Mateo, hoping that some of his genius will transfer to you in the knock. But you can't do either of these at the moment, because they have erected a barricade around the Portal of Glory and are preparing to restore it.

You are supposed to climb the altar and hug the medieval statue of Saint James and then descend beneath it to see the silver reliquary holding "his bones". These I figured I would return and do later without my pack. It was close to noon, mass would be starting. So I wandered the nave and transcepts of the church, taking its austere gray Romanesque interior, simple and bare, except for the ornate and shining gold gilt high altar and baldacin (canopy).

As I circled the interior of the Cathedral, heavy with my pack, I noticed a few confessionals open and priests occupying the booths inside and suddenly I felt this overwhelming need to confess. I have not confessed in, I don't know, decades, and I didn't even remember how to do it. But the moment I knelt in front of the priest, with his black robes and royal purple stole, the tears that I had been holding in check since my first view of the Cathedral with Eduard, began to flow freely.

He began in Spainish. I explained I don't speak Spanish. He asked me if I was German, "No, Americano. Ingles por favor." He didn't speak English, but he switched on his little light and pulled out a laminated card that said, "Suggest the following themes to the confessor." And a list of twenty or so questions followed:

"Have you kept the Sabbath holy by going to mass on Sundays and Holy Days?" (uhhhh...well see, church is pretty boring...and ummmm....well...no.)

"Have you honored your father and mother?" (You'd have to ask them, but I think so.)

"Have you commited sins of the flesh?" (uh, thank God, yes).

"Have you beared false witness by telling lies?" (I think my problem is I tell too much truth).

"Have you blasphemed or taken the Lord's name in vain?" (Well, shit, this whole blog is pretty much one long cuss).

"Have you induced abortion?" (Had to answer no to that one, but really, is that anyone's f'ing business?).

But even as he fumbled through the questions in English and I nodded or shook my head or inclined it in a "maybe" sort of answer, I still sobbed. Because these questions he was asking, and the answers I was giving, were not really what I was confessing anyway. I wasn't confessing about adultery or telling lies or cussing and not going to church. I was confessing to being human, and to being sorry for the whole clusterfuck I had made of my life simply by not honoring myself. And I think that priest knew, he must've known, that I was not confessing to any of these mundane, silly, obligatory sins mentioned on that shiny laminated card, that something else entirely had got hold of me at that moment. He was patient with me and he looked kindly on me and he extended his hands over me, and spoke softly in Spanish, and I remembered that this must be the part where he says "I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." And he told me my penance was to say two Our Fathers (Nuestros Padres) and come to church on Sunday.

"Really? That's it? Two Our Fathers and come to church on Sunday? Oh, did I get off light."

I've always thought the idea of confession was a bit lame. I always questioned a priest's power to absolve someone of their sins in God's stead and give them some silly little slap on the wrist token penance as if that made things better. But for the first time, I understood confession. You already have God's forgiveness. You always already had it. The priest is just the conduit to let you know that. And the penance really is just a token, because there is nothing you really need to do to be forgiven, except be sorry. And I was. And I already knew I was forgiven, I just wanted to hear someone else say it, and a Spanish priest in Santiago de Compostela is as good as anyone.

After my official absolution I went to my hotel (the pilgrim mass at noon apparently didn't happen today for some reason). I gratefully slid off my pack for the last time of the Camino, showered, opened the doors of my balcony to hear the noise of the busy alleyway below: the clinking of glasses at the cafes in the Rua de la Raina, the noisy chatter of locals and tourists, the languid guitar music from the musician working for coins around the corner at the Cathedral, and let these sounds lull me into the longest three hour siesta.

Later in the evening I set about exploring this pearl of a town, the old quarter near the Cathedral, and I window shopped for the cheesy souvenirs I had every intention of indulging in buying. I saw Uber German Peter sitting in an outdoor cafe with his friend and he invited me for beers with a group of people. We were to meet at 9:00 in front of the Cathedral. So at 8:40 I wandered over to the Praza d'Obradoiro and sat on the stone plaza. Somewhere nearby a street musician was playing a lyrical, lilting harp. I sat and just contemplated the glorious facade of this cathedral, now bathed in orange electric light from the square.

The facade was constructed in 1750, rather late, and basically enrobes the original 11th century Romanesque cathedral. But the facade looks much, much older. It is haunting and ornate, encrusted with a tangerine colored lichen, with weeds and flowers growing out of the crevaces between stones. I hope they never clean it.

I love the translation of Santiago de Compostela: Saint James, Field of Stars. It makes the ethereal earthly and that moment was exactly that, ethereal and earthy all at the same time.

By nine o'clock I was in such a serene and solitary mood. I didn't see Peter and his crowd in the square, which was just as well, because I felt like celebrating, but not like partying. So I took myself to Rua de la Raina and picked a restaurant with all the lobsters and crabs and octopuses and cuts of meat displayed in the window, went in and ordered sopa de marisco and scallops (because scallop shells are the symbol of Saint James and the Camino don't ya know) which were swimming in green oil with carmely brown onions and pink Iberican ham. I drank white wine and congratulated myself on making it to Santiago, on walking 798 kilometers or 496 miles.

Well done, Anointed Little Calf.

The Legend of Santiago

2008-04-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

St. James was one of Jesus´homies, one of the original 12. And after Pontious Pilot had Jesus exectuted (you all know the story of that hot mess), James supposedly sailed to Galicia to spread the juice.

But pagan Galicia was not having much of this Christian hoodoo, and James returned to Jerusalem, where in 42 C.E. Herod had him beheaded.

And now it gets a little wierd. Because somehow, in a ship with no captain, James´ body sailed back to Galicia, where it mysteriously disappeared for the next seven and a half centuries.

And in 813 C.E. a shepherd in Galicia saw stars falling on a field in Galicia, where he discovered a tomb. And inside it, the relics of the Saint.

And a church was built on that spot, and for centuries after, pilgrims have come from the world over to pay homage to what legend says are the saint´s remains (they don´t actually know for sure as no testing has been done, so we could all be haplessly flocking to pay homage to cow bones for all we know). But anyway, this legend has power and this power has drawn people, people like me, like a magnet....

to Saint James, Field of Stars.

Informational Update - Drum Roll Please

2008-04-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow. Santiago.

Day 38 or Animo! Animo!

2008-04-02T12:34:00.001-07:00

Notes on Day 38, April 2, Arzua to Arca

I smile when I see the graffiti of hundreds saying ¨Animo! Animo!¨ the closer I get to the end. All during the trail I have loved the fact that semi truck drivers and farmers in tractors and drivers in cars will honk at you and wave you on. Tomorrow is the final push and I savor the encouragement.

On the trail today there was a simple stone memorial to Guillermo Watts, a pilgrim who died right there, one day away from Santiago, in the early 1990´s. Pilgrims had placed rocks on the memorial (this is the token symbol of pilgrim respect). But someone had placed an old straw hat there too, and another person a bandaid. Which made me laugh and get a little lump in my throat at the same time.

As I get closer to Santiago, I am conscious of the fact that I have taken over 900 pictures, and this is after I have deleted the shitte ones every day. I realize my friends and family love me, but they might just mutiny if I make them stare at 20 pictures of the same Romanesque cloister, first in color, then in the muy artistico sepia.

Peace is descending on me now. Today there were melancholy moments when I recalled glimpses of this experience that made me think I never want to leave. Like when I sit alone in an old stone farmhouse, nursing a glass of wine and reading my guidebook, or when I notice the spring flowers blooming like pink and white candies dotting the forest floor, like when I am standing alone in front of a 13th century church portal, the creative power of ancient masters whispering to me through the carved stone.

But then I remember home and I think am ready to go there. I am missing my cozy bed, and reliable heat, and regular hot water and predictable toilet seats. I am looking forward to vegetables, and a laxative. I am looking forward to my own shower (at least if my shower is dirty and mildewy, I know it is my own dirt and mildew I am showering in). I am looking forward to pizza, and my friends, and my nieces. I am looking forward to rebuilding my life, stone by stone, carving in each the newly acquired wisdom of a painful past and the verdant hopes and dreams of a wide open future, but with the sincerest intent to live life in the now.

I am ready.

Day 37 or The Calm Before

2008-04-02T12:33:00.001-07:00

Notes on Day 37, April 1, Palas de Rei to Arzua

Last night, after another carb 'n' carcass bomb of a dinner at a restaurant with Chris and Christina, I returned to my municipal albergue where the dragon lady of a hospitalera would not give us any blankets (even though there were some), and where she would not open the other dorm room for those of us who don´t snore to be able to sleep in peace. Not at all in the Camino spirit if you ask me, so after bitching about her with a couple of other peregrinos, I left her a bit of a nasty note (I called her "La Diabla"), which was also decidedly not in the Camino Spirit.

But I slept tolerably, even without the blanket and with the snoring. Good God, without earplugs on the Camino I would be toast. I remember the first question Liam asked me when he met me. He eyed me with caution and said, "do you snore?" and he told me the story of a guy whose snore was so incomprehensibly over the top that Liam ¨thought the guy was taking the piss.¨ And each night Liam would make a loud noise with his fingers and lips (it sounded like a kazoo) to try and startle the snorers in their sleep, and each morning he would narrow his eyes at the offenders and say ¨there, that one right there, she´s the culprit.¨

This morning, like yesterday, another guy turned on the lights at 6:00 am. It seems like the closer we get to Santiago, the faster people want to get there, so the earlier they are getting up.

I marvel at how keenly sensitive you are on the trail to every slight, piddling discomfort. Each ounce of unevenly distributed weight in your pack, each teensy grain of gravel in your shoe, the niggling chafing of a buckle. But you don´t stop to fix it because getting started again is so hard.

My guidebook looks like it has been through a war zone. It has been rained on, spilled on, sweated on, dropped in water, in mud, in pooey mud and dried out by a fire. It has been stuffed in my belt, stuffed in my pack, stuffed in my pockets and taped back together. It bears silent witness to all I have experienced and born on this trail.

Today I had so much company in the way. Chickens, sheep, goats, singing birds. I am slowing down as I get closer to Santiago, not speeding up. I lingered over horses this morning. For ten minutes I stood transfixed by the sound of cows, their large heads just feet from me, munching the grass. I was hypnotized by the noise the grass made as the cows tore it and chewed, their large maws grinding rhythmically side to side, their big wet noses glistening in the sun. I have grown quite fond of these large lumbering lugs.

The farm dogs, who seem to love their lives with an abandon I wish I could embody, trot out to greet you cheerily at times, at other times they rush out to tell you to stay the hell away from their sheep. Either way they perform their duties with relish. And today a snake crossed my path and I watched in a trance as it slithered slowly away. And for one fleeting moment I saw a deer up ahead, petite and gray with large ears and an enormous white tail like a bunny´s.

I stopped in Melide for lunch and to blog. I figured it would take me another two and a half hours to get to the Albergue in Arzua, but I was meandering so slowly, so lost in peaceful thought, that three hours later I looked up with no idea where I was. I had not been looking at my guidebook at all (I used to be so diligent about doing my homework before a day´s trek, now I just go, trusting there will be a bright yellow arrow to guide me when I need it). I thought I might have overshot Arzua, which is a problem because there was no other albergue for another 18km. So I had to walk 300 meters to the main road just to find out I was still another 5km from Arzua. Am I slowing down to prolong the experience? I do not know. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I am just tired. Perhaps I am just needing to be quiet.

Day 36 or The Kiwi Brigade

2008-04-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 36, March 31, Portomarin to Palas de Rei

Last night in the albergue some dude ripped an enormous fart in the middle of the night and two guys next to me could not, or would not stop laughing (ok, well, I was laughing too). And this morning I understood why. I was swarmed by teenagers as I left albergue. It must be some kind of school field trip. How cute. But they blathered on loudly, with their noisy cell phones chiming pop music tunes, and their text messages going ting ting...ting ting. And since I have now become a Camino purist I am loath to have to tolerate the aural pollution of this giggling, gossiping, gaggle of chirdren. And I played leap frog with groups of them all day as they weaved in and out of the same bars where I sought refuge. My my my. I have become old and crotchety, haven´t I?

I stopped to wait out a bubble of kids on the trail and met a new couple doing the same. Chris and Christina from Australia and New Zealand respectively. So as we waited for the teens to straggle past we started talking. Chris works for a carpet retailer that sells carpet directly to the likes of Russel Crowe, Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman. He promised me that if I came to Sydney, he would show me Russel´s house, or at least his carpet.

I am amazed how deep our conversation ran and how quickly. Chris is a victim of childhood sexual abuse, former alcoholic, ex military, ex husband, reformed bad parent turned prison Kairos ministry volunteer who has found ¨freedom¨ in a little Catholic church run by Jesuits in Sydney. His wife, Christine, is also a former divorcee who has her own impressive resume of life difficulties. I am amazed what survivors people are, what troopers, what warriors we can be when we need to be.

Chris merely said, ¨So now tell us about your divorce,¨ and the floodgates opened, and they got all the dirty details and the salacious bits and the scandalous ones too. I couldn´t believe the ease and rapidity with which it all came tumbling out, but Chris said, ¨Hey, if you can´t talk here, where can you talk.¨

But I hadn´t even mentioned my days of obsessive ruminating and brooding on the Camino, when Christina said, ¨you have to go through a period of obsessing¨ to get to the point where bitterness won´t consume you. And I thought, yeah, I have to go through this right now, but the operative word here is through. I must go through it in order to not get stuck in it. And slowly I have been easing up on the gas and giving myself permission to just drive on this road for a while, because I know I will leave it behind, and therefore there is no reason to fear being waylayed here for forever.

In the afternoon I said goodbye to Chris and Christina and I took a guidebook recommended 2km detour to Villar de Donas. The church of San Salvador is all that remains of a 14th century monastery here with enticing frescoes. I suspected it might be closed, and so managed my expectations as best I could. When I got there, it looked completely deserted, but I stepped up to the iron gate of the churchyard and pushed. It gave way. People, if there is an open door or gate, I will walk through it, whether or not I am supposed to. Curiosity might not get me killed, but it might get me arrested for trespassing.

The church itself was closed, but the carved Romanesque portal was enough. I sat in front of this centuries old door and just regarded it. The opening a series of carved stone columns topped by pointed arches, each different in motif and descending in size until they reached the red wood door with it´s elegantly swirled decorative iron hinges.

I stretched out on the steps of the churchyard, which was strewn with white rice and lentils and pink and red rose petals, evidence of a recent wedding in this timeless place, and ate a picnic and still regarded the door. I did get a peek at the frescoes inside. There was an inviting chink in the red wood and I peered through. The slice of interior I saw was haunting and peaceful, but I was happy with just this door.

When I regained the trail I saw a couple of German guys travelling on horseback to Santiago in full period pilgrim costume. I had seen these dudes a couple of days ago in Sarria. At first I was a bit relieved that they have Ren Fair Geeks in Europe too, and that that particular travesty of identity crisis is not just an American phenomenon. But one of these guys explained to me that he was wearing replicated Norman garb from the year 1066. He told me that he and his horse had been at the reenactment of the battle of Hastings in England 2 years ago. 1,000 men and horses recreated the scene at Senlac Hill, and I immediately admired him and his spotted stallion and his heavy wool garb, nerd though he was. How bitch ass cool it would have been to have seen that, eh?

Today, today people, I crossed the 100km mark. I am less than 100km from Santiago. Praise Enselmo!

In the afternoon I had the trail pretty much to myself. The detour to Villar de Donas seemed to have cleared out the teeny boppers. I was trekking along in quiet contemplation when BAM! I stopped dead. Ahead of me was a 17th century wayside stone cross, the Cruceiro de Lameiros. There are many along the Camino, but now I was hit with deja´vu so overpowering it smacked me in the face. Its not that I thought ¨I´ve seen this before.¨ It´s that I thought, ¨I´ve been here before.¨ The sensation was so bold, so undeniable. And I thought of Liz Gilbert again as I realized: I was never not coming here. I was always going to come here.

And if that is true, then it also means that I was always going to divorce my husband, and I was always going to go through everything, the good and bad, that I have slogged through these past two years. Which then means that everything you experience in the universe, the good and the bad, is exactly as it should be. The grains of sand are needed to make the pearl.

Day 35 or Muchas Gracias, Mis Amigos, Mi Corazon

2008-04-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 35, March 30, Sarria to Portomarin

Today I said goodbye to Elaine and Roberto. Roberto is sick and they are staying in Sarria for the day. I will miss them, my new friends.

Today I woke, dressed, brushed my teeth, packed, ate, left, walked. Then walked more. I think I walked some after that. I think after that I stopped at a bar. Then I might have walked some. I kept walking. I have been walking. I am still walking.

As I walk I am thinking of all my friends. My piles of friends who have stayed with me and stuck with me, who have been there for my divorce and are now swimming like little fishes along with me on this camino, cheering me on with e-mails and posts. They are like my support crew in the van on the Tour de France, you know?

I am thinking of my friend Sandy in Cincinnati, who I am so happy I truly reconnected with when I separated from my ex, and who had sort of weirdly predicted that one day I might leave my ex and offered words of encouragement and reminded me how I had been the one to encourage her when we were young. I am thinking of my friend Andrea in Florida, who I´ve known since I was practically born and who, when she moved away in fourth grade, I cried over like I´d lost my foot. She has let me know through countless e-mails and blog comments that she is here for me, and like a dork I have not called her yet, but it means so much to keep hearing her persist in being there for me, waiting patiently for me to call, which I know I will (I promise).

I am thinking of my gurlz (you know who you are), the boys (you know who you are), W&J who helped me move furniture during my divorce (always the shit job you do for friends). I am thinking of my school friends, who have hung tight (Sam, MK, Rachel and the rest, who I will see again in summer when they are recovering from their first year of teaching. And I am thinking of Travis, my former lover and friend, who made me feel completely beautiful when I looked like a God-damned train wreck and made me laugh at a time when I would've been crying otherwise.

And I am thinking of my entire family who have lent a hand, a prayer, or mountains more for me.

And there are many more friends of mine out there, you know who you are, who have been in my life and have known of my hurt. And I dedicate this day of walking, so close now to my destination, to you. My friends. I am misting up a little as I type, and I think of you all and I remember the words of Clarence the Angel from It´s a Wonderful Life:

¨Remember George, no man is a failure who has friends.¨

I am a rich woman indeed.

Thank you all.

I love you all.

Day 34 or My Shepherd´s Dilemma

2008-04-02T10:22:00.001-07:00

Notes on Day 34, March 29, Triacastela to Sarria

Yesterday in Triacastela I pulled off a clandestine albergue switch. I had paid my 3€ for the municipal albergue, but it was dirty... and wet, and I was feeling picky and restless, and I quietly ducked out of albergue and abandoned Joe and Roberto and Elainie for the comfort of a cozy private albergue in a converted old stone house with heat and a private shower and extra blankets.

Roberto had told us how a priest in Madrid said a blessing for him and Elainie at a mass they attended before their Camino, and he advised them to remember to ¨be humble.¨ But I was not feeling humble or meekly grateful yesterday, and the closer I get to Santiago, the more I want in the way of comforts again. In the beginning I thought ¨you want me to sleep on dirt? Ok! great! dirt is quaint!¨ Now I walk into the albergue and immediately ask if there is heat, hot water, blankets and internet. My humility is evaporating like my money.

Last night I said goodbye to Maria and Pepe because they were taking another route to Sarria and I did not expect to see them again. But that sadness aside, the weather cleared today (natch), and I had the trail to myself this morning past lovely low dry stacked stone walls that crisscross the fields and pastures.

I stopped for lunch and sat on just such a stone wall that bordered a small pasture with about nine gray-white sheep and three fluffy spring lambs. They stood munching the grass and I munched my left over walnuts from Enselmo, which I ate with some dark chocolate I had bought. Mmmm, crazy good.

And one of the sheep wandered over to me and gobbled the orange peel I dropped at my feet. I was happy to have fed him what was probably a rare treat. And then the sheep dog ambled over and I tossed him the rest of my ham. And we picnicked together for a while before I noticed the shepherd sleeping in the sun in the far corner of the field. And such a swell of peace and wonder at this bucolic, simple, contented life filled me.

In the afternoon I walked through low canyons of moss and fern where sunlight dappled the trail. The way weaved through grey stone hamlets, the towns forming like pearls on a string along the path. Yesterday Joe had observed that ¨I´ve never seen so many derelict buildings in my life,¨ and I hadn´t wanted to say it, but he is right. The poverty here seems to be pretty deep. The Camino is the only
thing running through some of these villages, and the abandonment is the by-product of the younger generations fleeing to the cities looking for work. More often than not it is the old women, clad in skirts and aprons or smocks and golashes, that I greet while they are herding the cattle down the road in front of me or tending the cabbage patch by the trail.

And then the thing I have been fearing this entire trip finally happened. The dreaded bathroom emergency. And, well, remember Adrian? Yeah. Well, let´s just say I fertilized someone´s field today. Nuff said.

I got my 20k done in about 4.5 hours today. I was not trying to go fast, but I still had some of Elainie´s algae in my bottle and that shit really does work and I am determined to find some when I get home. It is probably illegal, but I don´t give a rat's ass. It turned me into Speedy Gonzalez for three days!

So I arrived in Sarria and had time for a nap and a trip to the store and when I was heading to my albergue I saw Elainie and Roberto climbing the main street into the old section of Sarria. And Joe was there and Maria and Pepe had come after all!

We hit the town for dinner at an expensive restaurant way too nice for the way we all smelled. Joe and I rhapsodized on our body funk during the walk to the restaurant. He complained about two French people (of course they were French, Brits hate the French), and said ¨I must´ve got caught in a bad slipstream or something because I started retching.¨ I´m surprised he hasn´t fainted yet from my body funk. I am about to. Jesus.

Dinner was by far the snazziest and richest (I mean flavor-wise, but price-wise too) food I´ve had the entire trip. I ate a gorgeous buttery sopa de marisco (seafood soup), and pimentos de Gallego (roasted red peppers with garlic and salt and drizzled with the brightest, greenest, fruitiest olive oil you can imagine), and a fat steak smothered in a queso sauce that is making me fat just to think about.

At dinner I mentioned my lunch on my stone wall with my shepherd far afield, and Roberto said ¨We talked to that shepherd!¨ And what I heard then broke my heart. No one wants to buy his wool anymore, so he just burns it and sells the fluffy, fuzzy white lambs to butchers for meat. And all at once my naive, romantic image of that bucolic, contented, simple shepherd´s life dissolved in a wave of guilt for not being a vegetarian and for wearing machine stitched clothes made by Chinese children.

Day 33 or Enselmo the Walnut Witch

2008-04-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 33, March 28, O´Cebreiro to Triacastela

When I walked out of my hotel this morning a bus load of German tourists unloaded right in front of me. One of them raised his camera and took a picture of me as if to say, ¨Look! There is a real Peregrino in the wild!¨ I guess I am officially part of the scenery now. But I´ve earned it.

I started off with the faintest if futile hope that the weather would have cleared from yesterday´s foggy white-out. What I really wanted though, was a weather miracle. I wanted a stunningly glorious sunny day with blue skys clear enough to see to Gibraltar from the peaks. Instead, the sock-in was actually worse than yesterday.

The heartbreak deepened as I read my guidebook for today which promised ¨the most stupendous views in every direction¨ from this elevation, and all I saw was the same impenetrable, immovable wall of white fog that engulfed the mountain yesterday. And with each turning the path took, each turning that I knew just had to promise the most breathtaking view, I felt my heart swell and then sink again at the inevitability of the fog, thick as mucous, staring me in the face.

I could have been walking in the red light district in Amsterdam and I would not have known the difference. I could have been marching into a pen of hungry, man-eating anacondas and I would not have seen them. I was hiking on a foggy mountain road with cars that couldn´t see me, which freaked me out. And later the visibility cleared from 20 feet to 200, and I couldn´t decide if this was helpful or just a cruel tease, because I had only pale glimpses of snow laced fields and I could hear waterfalls, but I could not see them.

And all the while it still rained and the rain changed the trail into a stream and the mud changed the stream into sludge again and I am now wearing the trail on the bottom third of my pants.

My spirits flagging, I stopped in a bar for some hot chocolate (they do hot chocolate pretty well here in Spain) and immediately I spotted Elainie and Roberto sitting next to a new guy at the bar. We did the requisite kiss, kiss (which always makes me feel so exotic and European) and then I ordered my hot chocolate and they introduced me to Joe from Oxford, England.

Joe is adorable. Not like want to take him to bed adorable, but like want to put him in your pocket and carry him around with you adorable. He´s 26 with a mop of long unkempt hair and a low pitched voice, which, when combined with the British accent and his penchant for irreverent phraseology, is want to take him to bed adorable. So we chatted each other up for a bit and then I headed back out into the bleak of Galicia.

Galicia is heavy with Irish roots. As early as 1,000 B.C. Celts arrived here by boat and began to get down with the Iberians, introducing a lineage of Celt-Iberians that is culturally distinct from the rest of Spain. You can sense the Irish about this place. I have walked through countless intimate cabbage patches growing by the roads, their tall green stalks plucked free of leaves which, together with potatoes and, if you´re lucky (and thank God I haven´t been yet), bits of pig´s head, end up in your piping hot bowl of sopa de Gallego in the evenings. The landscape, which if one could actually see it, is green and rolling and pastoral. It is so reminiscent of pictures I have seen of Ireland that one could easily get confused as to where one is hiking. And the pagan traditions run deep here as well I am told. I have seen countless little witches on key chains in more than one wayside gift shop.

In the afternoon, after a long descent from the hopelessly invisible peaks, the sun burned off some fog and I could finally see the valleys I could not enjoy from above. And with a sigh I did my best to appreciate the little consolation prize I had been given.

I caught up with Roberto and Elainie on the trail, and we carried on about the fog of the morning, how we were all worried about getting hit by a car, how Roberto and Elainie couldn´t see the trail markers and ¨got lost in the way.¨ I like how instead of saying ¨on the trail,¨ Roberto says, ¨in the way.¨ It is an accidental misappropriation of language on his part, but I love the happenstance meaning of it. His ¨choice¨ of the preposition in makes one a part of this road, not separate from it, and his word way symbolically evokes an inner path as well as an outer one.

We started dishing about our divorces (Roberto and Elainie are both each other´s second spouse), and I gave them the Cliffs Notes version of my reasons for leaving my marriage: that I was too young when I got married, that we were just wrong for each other to begin with, that we grew apart and that I wanted to live my own life and I found I could not do that with my ex. I left the more salacious details out.

Joe caught up with us and he and I went ahead now, yammering on about politics and the war and everything else wrong with the world. But we stopped dead in a small hamlet when we came to the most enormous, aged, gnarled, old tree I think I have ever seen. I swear it looked like it was occupied by some wizened, ancient spirit of the forest, like it might slowly awaken and speak to us.

And then, it did. Was that the tree that just said that? No. We turned around to find an old man, just as wizened and ancient as the tree, with red eyes and a red hat to match, and a worn and tattered sweater, approach us with a box of walnuts. ¨Nuescas. Una Euro. Una Euro.¨ He wanted to sell us the walnuts. I looked at Joe. Joe looked at me. We stood for a few moments deciding what to do, and then we figured what the fuck, lets get some walnuts.

So we stood while the man cracked walnuts for us with a heavy stone and we ate them, sweet and crunchy and from these very woods, right there under the spirit tree. He talked to us, but we didn´t understand much, and finally Roberto and Elainie came down the path, and they stopped when they saw the tree too, and joined us with the Walnut Man.

Roberto greeted him in Spanish and suddenly a torrent of language came from him. The man kept pointing at me and asking ¨Senorita? Senorita?¨ He wanted to know if I was a ¨miss,¨ in other words, unmarried. And when I said yes, he babbled on so fast I had no hope of understanding. And Roberto´s eyes got wide and he looked at me and said, ¨He is some kind of witch or something!¨ ¨Why?¨ I was desperate to know. ¨What did he say?¨ I was a bit panicked that he had predicted my doom or something, or read my aura and found out I am actually a Libre and not a Sagittarius. ¨I can´t believe it!¨ Roberto exclaimed. ¨He is saying to you ´live your own life! Don´t get married!, Do what you want to do with your life. Live for you!´ you know, the exact same things we were talking about back there in the way! This is weird, man.¨

It was weird. Really weird. And the four of us stood stuck to the ground for ages listening to this man insist to me that I live my own life, no one else´s. And Joe turned to me and said with curious wonder in his voice, ¨It´s like we´re the Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey, you know? We´ve been stuck here with this guy for 10 minutes, but really five years have passed and our families all think we are dead and have stopped looking for us.¨

Roberto found out this woodland sage´s name is Enselmo. In all I think it took us forty minutes to untangle ourselves from Enselmo, his walnuts, and his prescient prattling. But we finally did, and when we made it to Triacastela, we were relieved to find it was still 2008, and that we had not been put into a trance and trapped.

But at dinner that night, pregnant Maria told us all that she overhead a school teacher on the trail telling her students that the tree, the crazy huge old spirit tree, was 1,700 years old.

Informational Update

2008-04-01T05:47:00.000-07:00

I am in Melide right now and will stay ni Arzua tonight.

Tomorrow, Arca do Pino

Thursday, to Santiago!

only two days left until I get there! Cheer me on cuz I´m tired.

Day 32 or Would You Like Some Algae With That?

2008-03-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 32, March 27, Vega de Valcarce to O´Cebreiro

Last night was quite possibly the coldest night I have spent in my entire life. No amount of girl scout camping could have prepared me for this. And I am thinking that there has to have been something Christina and her husband could´ve done to mitigate the meat locker temperatures (they had a space heater, don´t ya know), unless the hospitalero´s speech at dinner last night was an indication that he finds the ´suffering´ part of the camino essential. But good God, there is enough physical discomfort on the Camino without manufacturing more out of some puritanical spirit of imposed penance.

Speaking of penance, in medieval times, walking the Camino de Santiago was one way you could earn a plenary indulgence for your sins from the Catholic Church. In other words, you could buy your way out of purgatory. I don´t know, but I think this little trek has earned me enough plenary indulgence credits that I can pretty much be an evil terror the rest of my life and still make it to heaven.

This morning Elainie gave me some spirulina (I have no idea if I am spelling that right). It is algae. ¨Eets for energy, for today. You put een water.¨ I tell you these Europeans (well, Elainie is Brazilian, but anyway) are the biggest herbal, voodoo, homeopathic remedy pushers you´ve ever met. Already Corina gave me some fizzy drink to prevent me from getting sick. Ana gave me three green herbal capsules to take when I did actually get sick, and so far Elainie has given me ¨infusion¨ for digestion, special tea for sleep, and now algae for energy. I want to ask her if she has some special fungi to help me sweat out my ex.

So today we have the steepest climb of the entire Camino and she tells me I am going to need energy so she put a teaspoon full of the dried green algae flakes, which look like fish food, into my water bottle. I went along with it, just hoping this stuff was not going to give me projectile diarrhea or anything. Elainie swears by it. ¨With this, you will go to Santiago today!¨

I was the first to leave the Brazilian meat locker this morning. For fuck´s sake you could see your breath cloud inside the building. It was warmer outside, in the rain too! And the first bit of trail followed a low valley. The trees were encrusted in spongy lichen making the wooded glens look like they were blanketed in green snow.

Yesterday I watched some news footage of the flooding in Galicia, (I will be crossing the border there this afternoon), and I can already tell the rain is overwhelming the ground. It cascades in white sheets and rivulets right down the hillsides, creating waterfalls and streams where none were in dryer days. All this water makes me have to pee.

Peeing outside is no longer the elaborate affair it once was. Now I just drop, squat and go on the trail if necessary. I am like, lightning quick.

I am excited to cross from Castilla y Leon into Galicia today. Everyone keeps telling me I have to try the marisco (seafood), the pulpo (octopus), and vino blanco (white wine) there. With each drooling recommendation my expectations have soared exponentially so that if these gastronomic delights are anything less than otherworldly I am going to be mega disappointed.

The closer I get to Galicia, the more I see derelict buildings with rotting grey beams exposed, buckled stone walls and warped, caved in doors. Time has forgotten these places. And this is farm country, so there is a loneliness already to the landscape that is magnified by its empty barns and sheds.

I broke my hike today at a small bar run by the most incongruous pair. A four foot tall, white haired abuela wearing a decades old smock, a moth eaten black sweater and slippers. She is straight off a post card of ethnic Galicia. And her grandson, a punk haired, Playstation II addicted teenager. The difference in generations could not have been more stark. I sat with them for over an hour while I peeled each layer of clothing off and dried it by their welcoming and white hot fire.

Being wet at this altitude blows. The rain gets you from the outside, but with all the rain gear you sweat on the inside. You think ¨I´ll just pop in this bar for some hot tea and get warm,¨ but the minute you stop moving you get cold and you can´t wait to get moving in the rain again.

As I climbed higher that afternoon, the rain was turning the snow on the ground into slush and the trail was transformed into rivers of muddy poo, or pooey mud, I am not sure which. And my guidebook has promised stunning views of the Valcarce valley from this elevation of 1300 meters, but I can´t see shit. Just a wall of white fog that will not budge.

And then I was, and I am not trying to flatter myself in anyway here, I believe propositioned by the scariest looking octogenarian Spanish farmer I have yet seen. He stopped me on the trail and asked me if I was alone, and like a moron I said yes (actually, this is a fairly common question from peregrinos who are curious if you are doing the Camino by yourself or with friends). Then he asked me if I wanted an ¨hombre para la noche,¨ a man for the night. At least I thought that´s what he said, and he kept leaning into me and finally grinned showing a mouthful of metal capped stumps where teeth used to be. I may not have very high standards, but dental visits are a must if you are going to get into my bed, dude. And between that and the personal space invasion, I spurted out a hasty ¨gracias¨ and an ¨adios,¨ and got out of there before I became the top story on the evening news.

And then over a piping hot bowl of sopa de gallego that night in my hotel restaurant, I was hit on again! But this time by a much more respectable septuagenarian, who kept calling me guapa. ¨Guapa, guapa, I know guapa,¨ I thought. ¨Yeah! Brad Pitt is muy guapo!¨ I remembered Elena telling me the word for handsome in Spanish that night we watched Seven in the albergue in Los Arcos. And then another old man doddered into the restaurant, quickly ascertained my predicament, and humorously offered me his cane to beat off my pursuer.

By the way, my dessert tonight was a hunk of cheese made right here in O´Cebreiro, tangy and sweet, and covered with honey, (I passed the bee hives on the way in). I am in love with this cheese and want to take it home and make love to it. Una queso para la noche, por favor!

Day 31 or What a Painter Nature Is

2008-03-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 31, March 26, Villafranca to Vega de Valcarce

With my arrival in Villafranca last night I officially crossed the ¨less than 200 km to Santiago¨ mark. I can hardly believe it.

And amazingly, the outpost albergue woke us all by playing Gregorian chant this morning. They have redeemed themselves a modicum with that bit of coolness.

This morning there was a choice in trails. Literally the low road or the high road. The low trail followed the main road, the high road a mountain ridge. Not one, not one single peregrino from either albergue took the high road this morning, so in the rain I had this mountain ridge entirely to myself. And I spent the morning congratulating myself on what a fearless adventurer I was and what suckers everyone else was, because even in the rain, what a view I had!

Spring wild flowers speckled the mountainsides in shades of butter yellow, electric blue, rosy pink, smokey white, and lavender against a backdrop of the blue-gray shale in the hillside. The shale itself was streaked with veins of ochre, gold, umber and rust and was encrusted with minty lichens. These colors blended flawlessly with the lingering hues of last autumn: the straw colored grasses, the burnt sienna and vermilion of the spent ferns and the pumpkin colored leaves.

And I strained to remember my Wordsworth:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

It was this kind of morning, you know? I looked in admiration at the canvas I was walking through and mused, ¨what a painter nature is!¨ to so keenly pick out such glorious and un-thought-of juxtapositions of colors, such combinations and depths of texture.

The slate here is so exquisitely veined and intricately hued I keep thinking what a gorgeous kitchen counter top it would make and I want to bring some home with me but alas, it is too heavy.

And that was morning. By afternoon, after I had my fill of walking in art, the rain changed to sleet, and the wind drove the sleet so hard that it blew sideways into the ridge from which I was trying to descend. It caught in my poncho, making me look like an inflated puffer fish on the mountain, and I laughed and wished I had a picture of myself in all this ridiculousness. Until the wind finally tore my cheap ass poncho to pieces and rendered it useless. My gloves, feet, head, every bit of me soaked, I thought what a sucker I am for taking the high road and how intelligently cautious all those other hikers are for taking the low road. They were probably breaking their hike in some cozy roadside bar right now, drinking Mahou or San Miguel, eating jamon and tortilla, while I was up on that ridge thinking about how blue my corpse will look in the coffin when I die from hypothermia. It was a bit harrowing, I have to confess.

Elainie and Roberto had told me about this albergue in Vega de Valcarce that was run by a Brazilian couple. I knew they would be there, if they had made it this far today, because Elainie seemed so comforted about the idea of a Brazilian albergue, with real Brazilian food and other reminders of her home country.

And sure as I am divorced and still hating my ex, when the hospitalero gave me the tour of the women´s bathroom, there was Roberto brushing his teeth with Elainie!

We spent the afternoon in this Brazilian albergue with its rustic Brazilian artwork on the walls and mellow Brazilian music on the CD player, with Christina (who sang to everything) and her husband (whose name I can´t pronounce). Christina put my clothes (all my clothes - I wrapped my sleeping bag around my bare ass) in the washer (there was no dryer, so I was leaving a lot up to fate), and the temperature in this albergue was even more glacial than last night, so Elainie and Roberto and I crawled into bed in the afternoon for another siesta in self defense.

In the evening I went downstairs to find that Christina´s husband had built a merciful fire, that Elainie had kindly hung all my clothes on a drying rack by the fire and that everyone was crowded around the blood reviving flames with Pepe and Maria, a father and four months pregnant daughter from Valencia.

So the five of us huddled around the fire, the only six square feet of warmth in the entire albergue, and held our wet clothes up to dry and watched the steam billow from them. It was an intimate evening, as we were the only five in the albergue. Pepe (I absolutely adore the name Pepe and want to get a goldfish and name him that), is a retired genetics professor and now restores antiques. Maria is beautiful and petite and adorably pouched in the belly, with the exact haircut with the micro short choppy bangs I was trying for. But she can actually pull it off with her coal black hair and sweetly round face and perfectly pale complexion.

Elainie wondered where I was last night in Villafranca because they did not see me at the municipal albergue. They met this tall, gorgeous, blue-eyed Brit who had just chucked his misery-inducing corporate job and became a teacher. ¨He remind us of you!¨ Elainie said, and ¨Oh, and I thought, ´where ees Kreesteen? We have to introduce her to him!´.¨ And where was Kristin? Kristin was freezing her nose hairs off in the outpost across the street instead of happily ensconced in the clean, dry, warm municipal albergue with you and Roberto and Mr. Tall Handsome Brit because your guidebook did not describe the outpost as ¨legendary.¨ That´s where Kristin was.

Christina made us a home cooked meal of traditional Brazilian food and before dinner her husband offered a few words about the camino. ¨If your heart is open on the Camino, you will always learn. But if you´re heart is closed, you will suffer.¨ A bit ominous to be sure, but I know what he means. If you are not open to the physical discomforts, if you are not prepared to be cold and wet and dirty and smelly and share your bed and your bath and your food and your bandaids, you will be miserable here. Utterly miserable. But if you can find a way to be open and unfazed by those experiences, then you will be embraced by the surprising and nurturing comforts. Like those of a zesty salad followed by a main course of red beans, some sausage, and baked rice. It was hearty and warm and delicious. And for dessert, the most divine homemade dolce de leche I have ever tasted topped with gorgeous walnuts from trees that grew right there in Vega de Valcarce. It was a tiny dessert, only a morsel really, but transporting. Just enough to savor and contemplate its sweet nuttiness and then regret it´s too quick demise in your stomach and leave you longing for more.

Informational Update

2008-03-28T14:51:00.000-07:00

I am in Triacastelo, and tomorrow I walk to Sarria.

I think I will be home on April 8th, if all goes according to plan. I have a lot of blogging I want to catch up on, hopefully tomorrow...

Day 30 or The Legendary Outpost

2008-03-25T13:42:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 30, March 25, Ponferrada to Villafranca

Morning:
Almost overnight the architecture in these border mountain villages has changed from that of the plateaus and valleys of Castilla y Leon. The warped, undulating roofs that used to be made of rusty Spanish tiles covered in bright green moss are now warped undulating roofs made of gray shale shingles shaped like fish scales and covered in blue-gray lichens. The buildings in this valley called Bierzo are made of grey stacked stone with pronounced second story balconies made out of black and gnarled timbers. They are not the sierra colored mud and straw homes that I have seen for so long.

Roberto can´t believe I started the camino in France and have come this far by myself. In fact, I have been told many times that I am ¨muy valiente,¨ very brave, for traveling on my own. And you would be surprised how difficult it is for me to accept this compliment about myself. Jamie Tarabay, who is my age and is Baghdad bureau chief for NPR, is brave. Not me. And yet I want so very much to be brave. Courage is a character trait that I ache to embody, even more than humor or generosity or patience. I am not sure why this is so, but perhaps if I am brave, I know I will endure. Endure this camino, endure my divorce, endure the uncertainty that is my life looking forward. Perhaps if I am told enough I am brave, at some moment I'll have the courage to believe it.

So I remember my mom telling me that when you refuse to accept a compliment from someone it is the same thing as saying they are stupid and don´t know what they are talking about, and I don´t want to be rude and insult Roberto, my new friend, so I have no choice but to agree with him that I am brave. And I am doing my best to believe it.

And apparently St. Francis of Assisi did the camino in 1212. So I am bravely walking in illustrious bald-pated footsteps too.

In the morning I breakfasted with Roberto and Elainie and then walked with them for much of the day. Roberto has worked for an American electronics company for 18 years and wants to chuck the bullshit and be a tennis program manager for a resort. It is a story I hear over and over again on the Camino, that the people who come here are searching for something more, or needing to change something about their lives, or simply needing time to think.

It only took four weeks, but I am finally used to the weight of my pack and can sling the fucker on with pretty impressive agility now. And it is about time, but I am beginning to appreciate the athleticism of the trail and take delight in its challenges rather than just look dully at an uphill climb and say ¨fuck.¨ My body has finally recovered its ability to adapt to exertion. For a year I was so exhausted that the thought of exercise made me want to go to bed and sleep for an hour, but now, I look forward to a day of kicking ass on the trail. It feels good to have a functioning (if slightly worse for wear), body again.

In the afternoon I left Roberto and Elainie behind and continued on alone. I waited for the ruminating to start, but miraculously, it didn´t. Adrenalized by the lovely Beirzo valley I was trekking through I found myself, unintentionally and spontaneously making vows of fealty to myself, each growing in boldness and commitment. ¨Never again will I allow myself to be told that I am selfish and believe it. Never again will I allow myself to be told that I don´t know what is best for ME. Never again will I allow myself to apologize for my feelings, my wants, my needs, my very existence. Never again will I hang my head in shame or guilt before someone else´s judgement. Never again will I allow someone else to define my reality or my experience or me. Never again will I allow someone else´s labels or categories or diagnoses of my feelings or behavior or choices invade my consciousness and become my own. Never again will I deny my own fear or doubt. Never again will I ignore my own instincts, my gut, my gut God, which is the truest form of guidance our bodies possess.¨ And on and on I went with my vows, until I could think of no more at the moment, but left the door open for more vows to come.

I was surprised at myself, my knightly, chivalrous self. I have decided to become my own defender, my own protector. And I marveled at the ease with which these far pleasanter ruminations came upon me today, and I realized they were the result of something my friend Marcie had said to me once: ¨You have to get really still within yourself.¨ To know what you are missing, to know what you want, you have to get still. And this litany of promises was born out of just that: stillness. I could hear myself instructing myself in exactly what I needed to do, to be, for myself.

Afternoon:
I am in an outpost. An absolute, Wild West, outhouse across the frozen fucking courtyard, outpost. Any minute now the fur traders should be arriving from Saskatchewan. My guidebook described this place as ¨a haven of hospitality and healing,¨ which is why I chose to come here instead of kip at the more institutionally austere municipal albergue. The guidebook also said this place was legendary. Hmmmm, is that because the dormitory is practically a treehouse? or because the shower water, which the hospitalero described as ¨caliente¨ is actually barely tepid? Or because the toilet is outside across a freezing stone courtyard? Oh, I can see this place is legendary all right.

This was by far the shortest shower I have taken, which is probably some kind of cosmic retribution for the fact that admittedly my hot water consumption on this trip can be described as nothing less than colossally inconsiderate. I can´t help it. I have had an addiction to obnoxiously long, fatally hot showers ever since I was old enough to take them and get yelled at by my parents for wasting hot water. And it is true that hot water in the albergues is sometimes scarce and you are supposed to leave some for everybody else. Once when I was camping out in a hot shower Pablo walked by my stall and shouted ¨Don´t esleep!¨ I am evil and selfish and I don´t care. But today the universe took its revenge and I froze in the shower room. And when you are that fucking cold there is nothing to do but take a nap in self defense. It is not that you are tired, really, just that you need to get your shivering ass under the covers before you turn five shades of blue.

And the German guys in their junk sling underwear are back and visually polluting the place again. Ugh.

And there is no washer and dryer here. I am getting desperate. My clothes are about to walk themselves to Santiago.

But this place does have high speed Internet. This is fucked up. How do you have high speed internet and no hot water? and no indoor toilet? and no heat in the dining room?

I was still a frozen block of ice after my siesta, so I figured I´d better get my body thawed and moving. I took a tour of the town where I had another (there have been about three) Under the Tuscan Sun moment and drooled over a gorgeous crumbling townhouse for sale in the medieval Calle Agua (Water Street). It was charming and in want of affection (and rehab) and I had to stop myself from wildly dialling the realtor´s number.

And I am glad to report that not all accommodations at the outpost were abysmal. Dinner was a lovely home cooked presentation of Bierzo stew (chorizo and cabbage soup) and huevos con fritas (eggs fried in paprika and olive oil and slapped on top of hot, salty french fries), and a dessert of apples straight from the local orchard.

After dinner, one of the volunteers at the albergue, a Brazilian named Adriano, asked me to read the lyrics for some of the songs he had written in English. At first I thought he just wanted me to correct his grammar and usage, but really I think he was compliment fishing. He could certainly play the guitar and sing, but his lyrics were on the generic side. But then, I can´t write song lyrics in my own language, let alone a second one, so props to him. I definitely do not have the courage to do that.

Day 29 or Oh No I Dih-int

2008-03-24T11:20:00.001-07:00

Notes on Day 29, March 24, Acebo to Ponferrada

Oh. My. GOD. I ate. A bowl. Of Blood! That Morcilla de Leon I had a few days ago? That was blood people, BLOOD! Roberto told me last night. It explains everything about the dish, the blackish brown color, the hummusy texture, the smokey taste. Blood. I ate a bowl of blood. Oh yes I did. Gross.

And there were a couple of scrawny German dudes in the albergue last night who liked to scoot around in their skimpy skivies with their junk hanging down. It would have been fine if they´d looked like George Clooney, but they didn´t. Gross. I mean I have the sense to cover up since I am closer in physique to Roseanne Barr these days than Cate Blanchette (I will never be Cate Blanchette though, dammit). I mean, consideration people!

So I left the albergue early this morning in a hurry to escape the dangling German nut parade and almost immediately I missed Roberto and Elainie. I wished I had popped my head in their private room to at least say goodbye. And I thought about them all day, hoping they would make it to Ponferrada and maybe I could have dinner with them.

I have worn a cloak of loneliness these last few days. I have never read a description of loneliness that so perfectly captures the sensation like Liz Gilbert´s eloquent lines. If I had her book with me I would quote her, but she describes loneliness as following her home and climbing into bed with her, with his boots still on. Damn.

So I want Roberto and Elainie back to keep me company. I am not finished with them. And especially now because my plan from yesterday, my plan to ¨set down¨ the ruminations and mullings over my ex-it at the Cruz de Ferro, didn´t work. My symbolic unburdening just didn´t take. I know it didn't take because my mind took its usual position at the starting line of the mental marathon of divorce races again today.

When I moved into my new condo my girlfriends had a little Wiccan cleansing for me. And before you go get all freaked out, no they are not Wiccans, they are harmless cute little atheists, and Wicca isn´t devil worship anyway, it´s nature worship, and as far as I´m concerned nature is just one of the many faces of God, so no biggie. So anyway, we burned sage, we invited good into our lives, we banished the bad, and all was healing and cathartic and welcoming for my new home, until the end. We did this visualization where we needed to picture the person we were ¨sending away¨ (my ex, obviously), and utter some words of generous dismissal, and then imagine this person walking off into the unknown, away from us. And I felt this fierce refusal from my gut to let go, and a chorus of ¨I´m not ready! I´m not ready¨ resounded in my ears, and I began to cry so that I thought I might not be able to stop. It was too soon for me.

And again, when I stopped a few weeks ago in the little church in Eunate, I tried to deposit more than just some hopes for the future. I remembered Liz Gilbert on the top of the ashram in India, creating a place and a space to finally send all of her thoughts and feelings about her ex husband. Not that she would never think of him or be angry again, but that now she would have someplace to ¨send¨ these reflections so they would no longer trouble and consume her waking hours and her present moments. So I sat in that nearly millennium old church and cried and tried to carve out a harbor for my thoughts, and vowed that when the engine of anger started to rev again I would send those feelings to Eunate. But it didn´t really work. Each day as I walked, the engine lept into gear and propelled my mind as I propelled my feet. And I found I could not send them to Eunate. It was too soon for me.

And again, at the Cruz de Ferro I could not lay my burden down on the pile of rocks that years of pilgrims have mounded at the base of that cross. I tried to add my ¨rock,¨ but it turns out I am still carrying it.

I don´t know. Maybe I am trying to force a process of healing that needs to happen naturally, in its own time. I remember my first shrink (the first of many), when I went to him for depression medication and the first question I asked was, ¨how long before I can get off them?¨ He looked at me and said, ¨You remind me of someone who has broken their arm and wants to take the cast off a week later. You need time to heal.¨ So a broken arm takes time to heal, and so does depression, and apparently so does a broken heart.

And even though I left him, my ex, my heart was broken. Because I did try to love him, and because I realize that I don´t think he ever really loved me, and because by the end we were such scathing enemies and I never wanted to believe that could possibly happen to us, that we could possibly hate each other that much.

So as of March 13, the ink on the judge´s signature has only been dry three months, and I realize this is still a wound that is weeping and red. And I think perhaps what I need to do is to just stop obsessing about the fact that I am still obsessing. To just let the flame burn out on it´s own when all it´s fuel is burned up and finally, one day, I will discover with delight I am simply bored with dwelling on the whole mess. I am sure a more disciplined person would say, ¨If you don´t like your thoughts, just change them; make the choice.¨ But I have tried to ¨make a choice,¨ and that choice does not seem to be choosing me.

Which is why I am now thinking that this Camino, with its multitude of beauties and rigors and discomforts, is such a good undertaking for me right now. I think you have to sweat out the toxins sometimes, and be patient while you do that. And it is taking me a while to learn the lesson of patience on this Way. At least four times now (including today in Ponferrada) in the afternoons when I hobble into the albergues I am in such a hurry to take out my wallet and pay or find my pilgrim credential and get it stamped that I drop things or knock things over and the hospitalero has had to say, ¨tranquilo, tranquilo!¨ ¨Calm down, you are here now, rest, have some hot tea, there is no need to hurry.¨

So I did slow down and drink the hot tea the hospitalero gave me, and then had a shower and a nap. But in the evening I did not see Roberto and Elainie in the albergue, and so went to dinner alone. I felt sad to be alone at first, but my spirits were lifted when I was introduced to the most astounding Tarte de Queso in the world. Tarte de Queso is cheese cake, but it is not like any cheese cake at home. There is no congealed Philly cream cheese in this divine invention. It is like someone took the fabulous, tangy cheese right from this region and poof! turned it into a cheese torte.

After my revelation of a dessert I meandered around the imposing and dramatically lit Castillo de los Templarios, yes the castle of the Knights Templar, before wandering back to the albergue.

And guess who I saw sitting at the computer checking her e-mail? None other than Elainie. She saw me and I saw her and we exclaimed and kissed on each cheek and made plans to have breakfast together tomorrow. And secure in the knowledge that I had my friends back for another day at least, I went to bed.

Day 28 or Christmas on Easter

2008-03-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 28, March 23, Rabanal to Acebo

Before I had left Astorga I had bought some walking poles in a sporting goods store. I knew I still had two mountain ranges to get across and the chances of snow were good. I suppose that I could have paid 8€ for one of those walking sticks that are often sold at the albergues, but no. I had to pay 40€ for the super hitech, lightweight titanium poles with the professional-looking but inexplicable doo dads that you put on the bottom.

It took me a little while to get used to walking with them. Like when I raised my hands yesterday in triumph at finally seeing the sign for my destination, Rabanal, and promptly tripped on a pole and almost did a face plant in the mud. Or like when I stabbed my shoe with the pointy end and narrowly avoided impaling my great toe.

But damn I am glad I bought them. They really do help with balance and you can transfer some weight from your feet to your arms as you push off. And they have saved my ass a few times too, like when I slid on ice and went into the splits and almost tore myself a second vagina. That would´ve been an awkward visit to the gynecologist for sure.

After watching snow collect on my window last night, I was nervous as I stepped outside this morning, but the snow was not so deep, only enough to make it beautiful, not dangerous. As I climbed, the landscape reminded me of a dessert but with snow. The low shrubs looked like upturned broom brushes, reminiscent of cacti, and the brown earth mingled with the white of the snow.

What a gift of a day. The higher I climbed, the deeper the snow. It covered everything like Christmas. Clouds hovered low and shrouded the tops of the highest peaks. I think Mount Everest is something like 30,000 feet high. Today I climbed a mountain that is almost 5000 feet high. I am one sixth of the way to the top of Mount Everest. And it is so cold at this elevation that I will never, ever want to go to Everest until global warming turns it into the next Acapulco.

And thank God for people who are crazy enough to settle a mountain village, live in it in winter, and run the cheeriest little bar I´ve been in. I was in dire need of heat and sustenance, and a rest. So I sat my frozen pork chop of a butt on a stool in the bar in Foncebadon and ordered the most delicious cup of tea. But a few minutes later I saw some Spanish woman order hot chocolate with cognac in it. I frowned at my tea, looked at the bar keep, and said ¨me tambien!¨ He smiled and winked and gave me my spiked chocolate with a pat on the shoulder. I knew I was going to need something a little more fuerte to brace against the winter cold.

And I ate a beautiful bocadillo of my own invention. It consisted of lomo (the pork Ana had turned me on to) and some queso de Gallego (the local cheese) that I picked out all by myself in a local butcher shop full of local people ordering their daily ration of meats and cheeses. I make a damn good Spanish bocadillo I tell you. I should open a cafe and serve Bocadillo de Kristin's all day long.

The last night in Astorga, Ana and Liam were talking about how it is customary to lay something down at the Cruz de Ferro, the high point of the entire Camino. Most people lay stones at the foot of the cross that they have carried all the way from the start of their Camino. It is a symbol of unburdening yourself of something. I didn´t know about this and I hadn´t been carrying a stone to lay down. Hell I´ve sent extra weight to Santiago twice, I wasn´t about to go picking up rocks to carry. And it was too late to go back to the states and get my ex and carry his ass 550km no matter how much I need to unburden myself of him. So I thought, what can I lay down here?

And then it came to me, I can lay down my obsessing, my ruminating, my arguing with myself. At least for the rest of the trip, anyway. So at the cruz de Ferro, with its mini mountain of rocks of people´s burdens, I laid down my burden of an overactive mind, and promised that if I started ruminating again, I would not get mad at myself.

Tonight after I ate a dinner of Bierzo stew (Bierzo being the valley I am now entering), I saw Roberto and Elianie eating a few tables away. I joined them and we talked travel and all the places they have been, and I pulled out my map of Spain and Roberto gave me the most incredible itinerary for a three week car trip all around the coast of Portugal and Spain. It is going to be hard not to hang on here and do that, but this is the kind of trip you want to do in a convertible with friends, you know. Anyone interested?

Day 27 or The Church on the Fence

2008-03-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 27, March 22, Astorga to Rabanal

This morning Liam ¨took the piss¨ out of a hapless peregrino who was just starting in Astorga by informing him that it is tradition to walk the first stage in your socks. I could see this poor guy look up in minor panic, until I caught his eye and gave a slight shake with my head. Poor lad.

I started out wandering around Astorga for a while before I headed on. The cathedral is, of course, exceptional looking, and the second building by Gaudi I've seen is quite evocative, and much like something you would see in a Disney fairy tale. But I can´t figure out how we got the term gaudy to mean over-the-top obnoxiously awful when his buildings are quite simple and nice actually.

But today I missed my bro. There have often been moments on this trip when I´ve been reminded of our trek on the Continent 13 years ago. Like in Burgos or Leon or Pamplona. When I was 20 we got a couple of backpacks and Eurail passes and bummed around the continent for a couple of months. We made vulgar jokes and ate nothing but baguettes and butter and whatever cheap food we could find. We were accosted by Italian passport police, harassed by a Venetian hotel clerk who confiscated our passports, and we amused ourselves by finding unintended and disrespectful uses for certain silly French words like "fromage" (cheese) and "fruits de mer" (seafood).

Anyway, my brother embodies the Indiana Jones spirit, and I know he would love this trip (well, maybe not the freezing albergues or the mystery food), but he would be completely stoked about the architecture and the history and the back country trails.

I have always looked up to my brother. He is one of these unfairly monumentally talented people. At the age of two he was building skyscrapers out of Legos without the instructions. Once, when we were on vacation in Florida, he drew floor plans of our condo building for fun. But even these had a geometric prettiness too them that made anything I drew look like a smudge instead of what it was supposed to resemble. I was so jealous of his blatant talent I tore his artwork. I spent my life wondering what I was talented at and why wasn´t my talent as obvious as Arnold Schwarznegger´s accent like his.

Anyhow, my brother had my back this last year too. He flew down to ATL to visit my divorce lawyer with me, just in case I was too much of a blubbering (or enraged) mess to understand what she said. And last Summer, when I was in such shell shock from the way my divorce was proceeding that I didn´t know at all how to proceed with my life except that I knew I needed a place to live and I knew I needed to get out of my marriage as fast as possible, he flew back down to make a weekend condo-mania tour with me and give me his professional architect´s opinion about the condo I had chosen.

So after all this somber and soap opera year, I found myself reminiscing about the good old days with my bro in Europe and I hope that I´ll be able to take another trip with him and his family again someday.

But not long out of Astorga, my stomach monster started grumbling (this has not changed either since my trip with my brother). I can´t get used to the dining schedule here. Breakfast is about 7:30, but by 10:00 you are hungry again, and lunch in the U.S. is noonish, but here it is 1:30 to 3:00ish, and dinner in the U.S. is 5:00 to 7:00ish, and here it is 8:00 to 10:00ish. So needless to say I always have an excuse to eat. ¨Well, it is lunch time at home,¨ or ¨Well, it is lunch time here.¨ So I stop in this bar and another 4 foot tall grandma made me the best tortilla I´ve had yet, and the bar keep gave me a little slice of ham that made my eyes bulge like I had just seen the resurrection (oh, that´s tomorrow). But this ham was like a jerky, only thicker, softer, chewier, milder. ¨Es jamon?¨ I asked her in my faux Spanish. ¨No, Cecina.¨ I made her write the name down for me and when I left she gave me a little extra slice for the road, for free. So I wrapped up the precious morsel, like a treasured artifact to savor later, and continued on.

The last 2km into Rabanal were bordered by a wire fence into which pilgrims had spontaneously woven hundreds upon hundreds of crosses out of branches. The fence went on for forever, and with the snow falling softly this little section of trail seemed almost like a sacred place. It had the feel of a church, or what I think a church ought to feel like: quiet, intentional, unpretentious.

I am sure many of these crosses were put here because it seemed like the thing to do, but how many were put here with a hope, a prayer, a remembrance, or gratitude? And I don´t know what it is about falling snow, but it settles a peace, a quietness on everything that eases one into contemplation. It was a lovely afternoon, and I was reminded of another poem by Robert Frost.

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I entered the town of Rabanal looking for the albergue my book describes as a veritable oasis. Alas, the oasis is shut down for the winter, but as I turned to go back down the main street to the first albergue, I met Roberto and Elainie, a Brazilian couple who were determined to stay in the best albergue they could find. They did not exactly seem like the roughing it type. Roberto has the hurried air of a business executive and Elainie is one of those fine, beautiful Brazilian women, so elegant and olive skinned. So the three of us checked out two more albergues, both closed, and when they told me the first one had no heat, I was the one that caved and went to the hotel.

That night I climbed three flights of stairs to my little attic room with the low ceiling that I hit my head on three times. The only window a skylight above my head as I lay in bed. I watched the snow gather on the window pane, flake by frozen flake, knowing with half apprehension and half anticipation, that tomorrow I would be walking in it.

Day 26 or Tray o Parts and Tight Chaps

2008-03-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 26, March 21, Mazarife to Astorga, 32km

This morning in the restaurant the waitress/barkeep/cook/maitre-d/hospitalero asked me what I wanted for breakfast. ¨Tostado?¨ I asked hoping for some toast. ¨No tostado,¨ she said, only bread. So I ordered bread, and she toasted it for me anyway. And in Spain they don´t put your toast in a toaster, they brush it with olive oil and toast it in a cast iron pan. She brought it to me and smiled when she saw me looking so happy. Little kindnesses.

This morning I stopped in a small town for some bread. I waited in line outside the panaderia because the shop was only big enough to fit one normal person or two Kiera Knightly´s at a time. A little four foot tall old lady asked me if I was German (I get mistaken for a German by everyone except Germans). When I told her no, I was from Estados Unitos, she cried, ¨Madre Mia!¨and crossed herself as she looked up to the sky. Then she laughed and smiled and patted me on the shoulder and rambled in Spanish at me. I have no idea what that was about, but I hope it had to do with the fact that I came so far to do the Camino rather than Estados Unitos is a pit of hellfire and should burn for eternity.

In Hospital de Obriego there is a 13th C bridge that is one of the oldest and longest in Spain. I have no idea why it is so long because the width of the river is only about 1/6 the span of the bridge. But anyway, legend has it that in the 1400´s a knight, who was spurned by a lady and felt his manhood threatened, swore to defend the bridge against anyone who dared cross in order to regain his honor and dignity. Knights from all over Europe came for the challenge and he successfully fended them off for a month and hence, regained his dignity. Is that what I have to do to get my honor and dignity back after my humiliating divorce? Defend a bridge? Shit, I´m screwed.

And I had the biggest let down of a lunch today. I was looking forward to my Calamares Romana and was served what I am sure is frozen deep fried squid reheated in the microwave. And I have now tried flan in a couple of places and I have to confess, I just don´t get it. I mean c´mon people, we can do better can´t we?

In another little town I met up with Liam and Uwe again, who are my new heroes for their ability to just sit and not give a rat´s ass when they get anywhere. Everytime something cool happens or someone says something good, Liam whips out his little notebook and says, ¨It´s all goin´in the book, man, it´s all goin' in the book.¨ I just hope if I make it in the book, he makes my ass look smaller than it is and describes me as an American vixen in cargo pants.

Some new blisters on my heels can no longer be ignored. I have discovered this stuff called Compeed. It is like a second skin and all day long I couldn´t wait to just get to a farmacia and buy some of the trajically expensive bandaids of the gods and put them on my heels. But the 11€ bits of relief FELL OUT OF MY POCKET on the way to the albergue. So after my shower, when I was sitting down to enjoy applying my glorious Compeed to my bubbling heels, it was gone. Gone! I had to go back and buy more dammit, so I just spent about $40 on bandaids I will wear for two days.

I did not get to Astorga until around 7:30 owing to the fact that the hike was 32km from Mazarife. Holy crap I am completely done in.

The albergue was in a converted 18th century house with two foot thick walls, timber beamed cieling, and floor to ceiling windows with interior and exterior shutters. I was dying to know how this former upper crust home would have looked like when the original owners lived here. Now the ancient stone room I slept in sported 10 bunk beds and 10 smelly peregrinos.

That night, Uwe, Liam and I met up with three other pilgrims for dinner. Ana (this time a German) had heard about a restaurant that serves this traditional meal of a giant tray of random animal carcass parts, including pig feet. So we were all looking forward to our little culinary experiment in this restaurant far two nice for our stanky asses. And in the end, they weren´t serving Tray o´ Parts that night and so the only thing we could all afford was the fish soup, which was good, had lots of spinach and chick peas, but no fish. I think they waved a fish in the general vicinity of the soup or something.

During a discussion of our rain gear, Liam outed (ha ha) Uwe as having brought rain chaps instead of rain pants. Leave it to a gay man to bring rain chaps. Anyway, Uwe complained that he didn´t like them because they were too tight. ¨Really?¨ says Liam, ¨you don´t like tight chaps?¨

Informational Update

2008-03-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

I am in Ponferrada freezing my tits off. Tomorrow Villafranca.

Oh, and I thought I was completely alone in this cybercafe and I just farted huge. And I just turned around and there is a dude right behind me. I am laughing so hard at my stupid self right now. :)

Day 25 or Have You Seen the Light

2008-03-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

Notes on day 25, March 20, Leon to Vilar de Mazarife.

Holy Thursday dawned and the first morning Easter Week procession was gathering outside my hotel in the Plaza San Isisdoro. I decided to watch for a bit before heading out of Leon. I noticed one of the barge carriers had no shoes on. I pointed to his feet and said to the people next to me, ¨No zapatos!¨ Apparently someone takes their penance muy seriously. Walking barefoot on cold medieval cobbled streets? Either he´s crazy or he did some bad shit.

Today really tested my navigational abilities. They are not the best to begin with either. I got lost no less than three times. The suburbs of Leon, the signage, and my maps all conspired to confuse me. Once I started down a road and a car honked at me and the driver stopped to tell me I was going the wrong way (thank you random nice man). Once I had to slog across a poo filled field to a village to find out from a garbage man if I was going the right way. And once I walked at least a half a km without seening any trail markers, decided to go back, found the trailmarker saying that I was indeed heading right afterall, then retraced my steps and found the needed trailmarker ten feet further on the trail than where I turned back. Grrrr.

I did stop in a little shop and got some empanada (my first in Spain) for the road. The was not the little pocket of stuffed dough I´ve had in the states (Mexican you know). It is more like a stuffed pizza, but without the sauce, or the cheese. This one was chorizo and bacon. Nothing like pure pork fat and pastry dough. It was tasty, but it kept coming back up for visits by way of very violent burps for the next hour.

But once the confusion of the suburbs and the obstructions in my esophogus cleared, the trail opened out on wide farmland, past fallow fields with silvery winter grasses bending with the wind. The frosted mountains still beckoned and daunted from the distance. They loomed so large that they looked close, like I could be in the foothills in a few hours. But they are yet a few day´s hike away, and that means these beasts are huge.

But inevitably, like a scale returning to zero after it´s preoccupation is gone, my thoughts returned to my ex-it. It drives me insane that my mental set point is still set to him. I replay dramatic scenes in my mind, repeat heated words that were said, and futilly fantasize about changing the outcome of a history that is already indelibly written. ¨If only I´d said this or done that, that would´ve trumped him, that would have trapped him.¨ But then I realize that if I had indeed said A or done B, he just would have said X or done Y, and I´d be right back where I am, never having achieved that penultimate blow to his incomprehensible ego, never having found the right combination of words to leaving him standing, staring, mouth agape, unable to respond to my piercing truth.

It´s like an endless game of tic tac toe against a computer. No matter where you put your X, it is always a draw. No one ever wins. No one can. And so in frustration I find myself chucking my ruminations in favor of one fervent wish to the universe that a bomb drop on his house.

Which is why I NEED to follow my Aunt Linda´s advice and ¨just BE.¨

You see, my mom took a rather straight and narrow path into adulthood. Her sister, my Aunt Linda, on the other hand, did not. Her road had significantly more harrowing curves, detours and some dead ends. Which is why during this last year of crisis, when my mom did her very best to understand but couldn´t always relate, my Aunt knew my anguish before I even articulated it. ¨I know, I know,¨ she´d say, ¨you´re me.¨ Everything I was going through, she had already been there, taken that road, found that detour, hit that dead end. I am so lucky to have gotten so close to her this past year, and I am amazed at how prescient so much of her advice, so many of her warnings, so much of her hope turned out to be. I didn´t always believe her when she warned me, or told me things would get better, but it was some shred of optimism to cling to in the darkest moments.

Anyway, this angel of an Aunt is constantly reminding me, because I constantly need reminding, to ¨just BE.¨ And I know she is right. But how exactly does one DO this when one´s internal monologue is a perpetual litany of expletive laden insults aimed at one´s ex-it? The sole goal of which is to invent that zinger hum-dinger epithet which employs just the flawless combination of vituperative sarcasm and stinging wit that would've sent his dignity limping back to its hidey hole?

Just BEING doesn´t seem like something that should be so hard, and certainly not when you are hiking in Spain beside adorable Spanish sheep and carrying tasty Spanish clementines. It doesn´t seem like something we should have to practice, or like something we should be able to forget how to do to begin with. And I know we all are born with this ability. I watch my four year old niece just be when I am playing space ship or pirates with her. She is an expert at just being. When do we lose this? Because we do. And why is it so hard to find again?

So I thought of my aunt and my niece today and practiced just being. Giving myself a mental slap whenever my ruminations started to creep back in and take root. Reminding myself to look around and remember where I am!

On the trail I passed two pilgrims who embodied the spirit of being. They were lounging under a tree near the trail. They looked utterly content and in no hurry whatsoever to do anything other than just lay there. I thought this would be the perfect way to ¨be¨ for a while, and 1km later I found my own lonely tree in a field that wanted some company, and I sat down, took off my shoes and socks, drained some blisters, massaged my feet, and went to sleep. For a while on the edge of a field under the Castillian sun, too close to the ground for the wind to bother about, I rested, and breathed, and just WAS. And when I got up and moved on, I WAS all the way until I reached Mazarife, where I chose an albergue based on my book´s description of it´s ¨atmosphere¨.

It was another of those rehab terrors. The hospitalero had provided crayons for pilgrims to ¨decorate¨ the walls. Often they scrawled cheesy love poetry, syrupy spiritual platitudes, drew hearts and rainbows (hurl). But occaisonally there appeared the astonishing bit of artwork, the funny cartoon, or the witty proverb. And in the Albergue there were only two other pilgrims, the two pilgrims, in fact, that I had seen lounging under a tree on the trail earlier today. Liam, the Irishman from Belfast living in Barcelona, and Uwe (pronounced like the vacuum cleaner, Hoover, only without the H, or the R at the end for that matter) from Berlin. Uwe is the guy you want to be your doting gay uncle for life. Liam has that viscous Belfast accent where the words form in the back of the throat. I secretly repeat everything he says in my head just to practice that off the chain accent. Uwe met Liam on the train to St. Jean an they have stuck together for the entire Camino.

We had dinner together in the big hot spot in town, which is the only spot in town. I asked Liam what he does back in Barcelona. He used to be a barkeep but got tired of drunken assholes. ¨I guess you could say I´m a writer, but I haven´t had anything published yet.¨ So he is the kind of writer I am, the dreaming kind. But I quickly discern over dinner that with his sense of humor his name will be in print long before mine. And Uwe is quite possibly the sweetest man I have yet met on the Camino. He has a partner back in Berlin and a PhD and does something important and boring (according to him) in public transportation planning and is feeling, somewhere in the region of his heart, that it is time for a change.

On the way back to the Albergue Liam and Uwe asked me if I had ¨seen the light.¨ ¨If you´re talking about the light at the bottom of a glass of Pacharan,¨ I said, ¨then yes, I have.¨ But they showed me pictures of a real light they had seen in the sky right near the sun above Puenta La Reina a few weeks ago. It was an eerie light, casting a sharp vertical ray that sliced through the horizantal stratus of clouds. Strange and mysterious looking it was, so Uwe had gotten out his compass. The Light, as they called it, appeared to the west, hovering directly over Santiago.

Day 24 or The Leo in Leon

2008-03-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 24, March 19, My Day in Leon.

Holy shazam, Batman! What a day. What an incredible day!

This morning the priority numero uno was to find a hotel room, which I had some doubt of being able to procure owing to the Holy Week shenanigans going on around here. But alas there was room at the inn, well, the second inn anyway, and once I was installed in my little haven, I promptly and enthusiastically went back to bed.

But not for long, dear readers, not for long. Unlike the city of Burgos, which I wandered around aimlessly like a happily lost child in a colossal sweet shop, Leon requires a plan.

First, the cathedral. To be sure it is not the beast of a cathedral that Burgos is, but it is a more contemplative, sacred spot in my view. Whereas Burgos felt more like a gargantuan religious museum, Leon feels more like, well, a church. It is a masterpiece of 13th century French Gothic architecture and 125 stained glass windows flood its cavernous stone nave with jewels of colored light.

I found myself wishing I could hop on the Concord, fly to the ATL, wake my friend Sam (who is a stained glass artist) from her sound snooze, grab her and fly her back to Leon with me and say, ¨Will you just look at the insanity of this medieval artistry!¨ I know she would have loved it. The windows are divine, really. Of course there are the usual hues of purest reds, royal blues, emerald greens and cheery golds, but there were also tones of magenta, teal, amber and celadon that added depth and subtlety and happpiness to the light.

Outside the cathedral I noticed a sign that said, ¨Access to the Platform.¨ I figured this was some kind of external balcony, like Notre Dame in Paris or Chartres, so I eagerly paid my 2€ and climbed a wobbly scaffold staircase 70 feet high in the air, only to re-enter the cathedral through a window stone frame (without the window of course), and onto a platform halfway up the nave at the clerestory. And here I learned that the 1800 square meters of medieval stained glass are undergoing restoration and that access to the platform was opened to educate the public about the project. This was the platform where the windows in the clerestory are painstakingly removed, frame by precious frame, meticulously cleaned, exhaustively documented, skillfully repaired and gingerly restored back to their frames with new high tech protections from the elements and human goof ups. It was an obnoxiously cool thing for the cathedral and the Leonese government to do, let the public go up to the platform. I was googly-eyed the entire time, head spinning with fascination.

It takes a lot of energy to spend two hours being amazed, so I was feeling a bit peckish, and saw a chalkboard sign at a restaurant near the Cathedral that dared me: ¨Autentica Morcilla de Leon.¨ I had no idea what morcilla was, and crazed for the authentic Spainish culinary experience, I walked in and ordered it.

Whatever animal this used to resemble I do not know, but it had been cooked down to a dark brown, unidentifiable moosh. It looked a little like some things I had stepped in on the trail. So I wispered a quick plea that it not be horsemeat (apparently they eat that here), and tasted. Hmmm. It was kind of smokey flavored, with spices, although I could not tell you which ones. The texture was a bit legume-y, kind of like hummus. Oniony. I liked it. I really did. And I still have no idea what morcilla is (which is good cause if I find out it is puree of goat brain or something I´ll probably ralph), but at least I can pronounce it now (morTHEEya).

After my strange and tasty nosh I headed for the Plaza Mayor where I was gloriously surprised with the ¨Traditional Leonese Market.¨ Holy jeepers, Batman! The gorgeous fruits, the vibrant veg, the hanging meats (salchichons, chorizos, salamis, jamons, full legs of pork, mystery organs), the cheeses - beautiful creamy wheels with wedges missing to show sexy hints of their pungent yumminess. The pescaderia (fish monger) with the mounds of salt cod and the sound of her cleaver clapping against wood as she chopped the filets for her customers.

It reminded me of the frenetic market scene in a Christmas Carol (the one with George C. Scott). I was so enthralled, my eyes bulging as I surveyed this culinary Nirvana. You´d have thought I´d never seen an open air market before in my life. I watched hunched magenta haired grandmas fill their totes with this bounty and was wildly tempted to turn stalker and follow one of these hobbling old abuelas home and demand that she cook me dinner at pocket-knife point.

But despite the happening scene at the market, I still did not want to miss out on my siesta, so I returned to my hotel. And I had a bath too. Imagine my ecstacy when I saw that my tub had jacuzzi jets. Imagine my not surprise when they didn´t work. But that´s all good, because I still basked for an hour in a tub full of illegally hot water.

One of the most outrageous places in Leon is San Isodoro. Founded in the 11th century, it is one of the few basilicas in Spain permitted to say the Isidoran-Mozarabic rite of Catholic mass instead of the Roman rite. I spent the afternoon at this church-museum with my jaw perpeturally dragging on the stone floors. The kicker was the 11th century stone burial vault where over 40 kings, queens and princes of Leon repose underneath an exquisite frescoed ceiling which earned it the nickname: The Sistine Chapel of Spain. No offence to Michelangelo or anything, who I know was a pretty talented dude and all, but I much prefer San Isidoro, and it´s 400 years older than that one place in Rome. The frescoes are original, barely faded, barely restored. They are haunting and vibrant and captivating. In one grotesque scene, which my wee brain surprisingly recognized as a depiction of the Slaughter of Innocents, Herod´s soldiers ran swords through the bodies of babies. Yeesh. These Romanesque painters didn´t hold back either. I gather there was no MPAA around at the time to give this frescoe an R rating for violence.

(Hey! The picture above is not mine, I found it on Google Images.)

But my tour of San Isidoro, like my tour of the platform at Leon Cathedral, was in Spanish. And unlike Ana at the monastery in Burgos, these guides did not speak slowly and use hand gestures like they were talking to two years olds so I could understand. I stood helpless as gems of knowledge fell on my ears and remained stubbornly uncomprehended. I couldn´t understand what the lady was saying about the stoles woven by Leonora Plantagenet. I missed the explanation of the carved agate chalice from 1056. I was lost during the tale of the silver reliquery of San Isidoro that used to hold his bones.

I wished I had a pocket sized Marcelo (my Ecuadoran friend) to translate for me. (Actually, Marcelo is pocket sized, and I know he´ll forgive me for saying that cause he know´s I adore him, but I didn´t bring him with me). Why doesn´t everyone speak English? Why don´t I speak Spanish?

But instead of being enlightened with facts and figures, I had to be content with mere awe. Which maybe isn´t so bad afterall. There is an element of mystery to that which we can´t fully understand. Since I could not understand the guides, I could only imbibe these places through the raw senses. Feel the cold damp of the burial vault, sense the low light faintly illuminating the chamber from the cloister, gaze at the frescoes and contemplate the patterns, colors, and faces of the 900 year old figures. I suppose I came away with an entirely different experience than I would have if I had known what the guide was explaining.

Gaudi´s architectural masterpiece is in Leon. The Casa de Botines. Inside was a different masterpiece alltogether: a free exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci´s inventions, brought to life in working models. I did not know that da Vinci, in addition to his numerous fanciful flying contraptions, invented an inflatable innertube for floating in water, an underwater breathing mask, a pair of shoes, each like a mini boat, for walking on water. I was incredulous at how many machines and gizmos he dreamed up, and floored to realize just how many were practical failures at the time. But these ¨failures¨ are the seeds of so many of our modern inventions! So just imagine if da Vinci had said, ¨This whoozy whatzit doesn´t work. I suck donkey balls. I´m a failure. I give up,¨ and quit inventing? just quit imagining?

But he didn´t. He kept inventing, kept imagining, because he knew it was the idea that mattered. And today we think of him as a genious ahead of his time, not a failed inventor. And the whole thing got me thinking that I really need to re-adjust my thinking regarding my own fuck-ups.

And mulling over da Vinci and his multitude of brilliant failures, I found a spot on the Ave. Ordoño, the principal street running from the modern city (modern meaning 19th C) to the Cathedral. The atmosphere was like a carnival: vendors selling balloons and sweets, parents fussing over children bundled in scarves and hats with only teeny eyes peeping out, four foot tall old men (Spain has a surplus of people who are exactly four feet tall) jockeying for a spot on the parade route.

I tried to follow the procession, but at one point the sidewalk was so jammed there was no budging, and the choice was either to stand there for twenty minutes and wait for the clog to clear, or duck into the bar, whose door happened to be conveniently situated right in front of me. I´ll give you one guess what I did.

And so it was that I was served my first shitty glass of wine in all of Spain. But that´s ok, because if I learned anything from Leo tonight, it´s that they can´t all be successes, and the important thing is to keep trying, wine that is!

Day 23 or To the Cheater Goes the Spoils

2008-03-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

Notes on 23, March 18, El Burgo de Ranero to Leon

This morning, in the mule crap town of El Burgo Ranero, Ana (the doctor who massaged me with olive oil yesterday) and her friend joined me for breakfast (at the same bar that blew chunky yesterday). She fished around in her pocket and pulled out her business card. ¨Thees ees my phone number. Jou call eef jou need anything, Ok?¨ I was touched. Clearly this woman cared about me. I have no idea why, but she cared about me enough to rub my meaty calves with oil and eat breakfast with me and give me her phone number. Maybe I reminded her of her daughter, I can´t say. I kissed her on both cheeks (Spanish tradition you know), and thought that was goodbye. But she and her friend waited for me to leave the restaurant, and began to walk with me.

And so it was that I spent a rather peaceful day on the trail with Ana. Sometimes we walked together and talked, at other times continued singly. We picniced around 11:00. Ana kept offering me all she had: half a tomato, more rosemary oil (this time for my salad), some lomo (smoked pork), nuts, dried fruit. I had very little to share in return and almost felt bad for taking all she offered. But then I remembered the words of Ana Maria at the Albergue in Belorado. On the Camino you have to learn to give, but you also have to learn to recieve. Ana showed me pictures of her lovely home near Barcelona. It looked so picturesque, so effortlessly comfortable. ¨Eef you come to Barcelona, jou can stay with me. Jou will be welcome like family.¨

And so we walked quitely, talked simply and ate together until we reached Mansilla de las Mulas, the mountains of the Picos de Europa standing sentinel to the north. When we reached Mansilla, I wanted to stay, and Ana and her companion wanted to continue. So we hugged and kissed and said goodbye. And I find myself struggling to comprehend this quiet kindness she showed me, an unexpected acquaintance of hers for no more than a few hours. Did she sense how much I needed a to be taken care of a little for a day? after so many solitary days of taking care of myself? Who was this woman with the salad oil and the softest voice and the kindest eyes?

I felt the loss when she left too. I wandered around the town not finding the same comforting shelter I found with Ana in the fugly town of El Burgo Ranero, even though Mansilla was much, much cooler. I poked my head in at the albergue, and it looked cold, and wet. Cold and wet is a combination I have come to despise, even if I encounter it daily. And I couldn´t bring myself to cross the threshhold of the albergue and hand over my 5 €. I just couldn't do it.

I pulled out my guidebook looking for an out. And there it was: in beautiful black and white. ¨You may readily recall the tiresome access into Burgos (do I? The memory of that day is burned in the back of my skull) along the busy roads into that city. Whatever your prior experiences and intention for this pilgrimage, there is the possibility to avoid the busy (and dangerous) main road into Leon by taking the regular bus service from Mansilla direct to the city centre.¨

That does it. I was saved! After Burgos I made myself the promise that if the puritanical guidebook author so much as mentioned the word bus again, I would take it. And for a mere 1.20 € I was happily perched in my gaudily upholstered motor coach seat eating cookies and gazing out the window at other more dedicated (or more enslaved depending on your P.O.V.) pilgrims who were treking along the concrete motorway on foot.

By the way, do you know how fast cars and buses go? They go, like, really fast. I have not been in a car in over three weeks and now I am in awe of the phenomenon that is modern motor travel. In just 20 minutes, 20 measley, itty bitty, teensey tiny, pequeño mintues we were in Leon. (It would´ve been 15 if we hadn´t stopped everywhere in between for more passengers). That´s it! 18.6km in 20 rediculous minutes. I can´t wrap my brain around it.

And I am not sorry either. At times I felt like I was riding through Gwinnett County Georgia for fuck sake, or Anywhere, U.S.A. with the bill boards, the road signs, the industrial buildings and box stores. Barfola.

Irish Charlie would be proud of me for refusing to be oppressed by the tyranny of the Camino. And if there was any lingering guilt on my part, I reasoned it away by deciding that by now I have taken enough mini adventure detours, explored enough towns and cities on foot, and gotten lost on the Camino and had to retrace my steps enough times that I have more than made up for my missing 18.6 km. So there. Guilt, Ye Are Vanquished!

I entered Leon with renewed feet and renewed spirit. I found the albergue tucked away in a convent and again I recieved more blessed reassurance that taking the bus was a stroke of genious. This albergue had heat. I mean HEAT! Enveloping, snuggly, toasty heat that emanated from the multitude of glorious, heavenly radiators and I knew I would not have to entomb myself under 18 stinky wool blankets tonight.

After droping off my crap and cleaning up. I set out to explore Leon. Then I got a wild hair up my ass and decided to get my hair cut. Doesn't everyone do this while hiking across a foreign country? See, before I left my friend George (fabulous hair person that he is), lopped off all my locks cause I didn´t want to fuck around with hair on this trip (point of fact: I have not combed or brushed my hair since I left the States). But I just wanted my bangs a little shorter. You know, kind of pixie-ish, like Mia Farrow in Rosemary´s Baby? So try not speaking a word of Spanish and walking into a salon and miming what you want done with your do. (I told you I got a wild hair up my ass). But she got the gist, and I got the bangs, and I was ready for my night on the town.

So I had already gotten oriented to the city earlier in the day, and I found out the Holy Week procession that night was going to depart from close by, and I found a spot in the crowd lining the street and wedged my way in. Apparently, and I think I vaguely remember reading about this somewhere like the doctor´s office a long time ago, but the Holy Week processions in Leon are of ¨international cultural interest¨ (or so my little brochure says). And after seeing one, I get why.

But first one must get over the mildly disconcerting resemblence of the costumes worn by the processors to those of the KKK. The pointed hoods are a bit, mmm, well, lets just say that if you were black and in the U.S. and you saw these dudes coming, you´d be hoping there wasn´t a tree nearby. And the guys with the rounded hoods look for all the world like medieval executioners. I had asked Ana what the hoods symbolized. She couldn´t tell me for sure, it was not an aspect of religion she ever took an interest in, but she thought they were a sign of penance, and that the hoods protected the anonymity of the penitent.

But intimidating resemblences aside, the ambiance created by these processions is at once somber and rousing. The streets are filled with the scent of incense. The barges are guilded, carved, festooned with roses, alums, birds of paradise, every you-name-it flower you can imagine. The staturary on the barges presents the scenes from Christ´s passion: the garden at Gethsemane, the betrayal of Judas, the carrying of the cross, the crucified Christ, the Pieta, the Virgin Mary, etc... Each barge is carried by maybe 70 or 80 pall bearers, each steping in time with the slow pound of the drums and the high blast of the trumpets. The trumpets are tiny and seem excuciatingly difficult to play judging by the occasional dischordant squeak escaping one here or there. But the music works. It swells, it thrums, it vibrates within you, it gets in your chest and haunts there.

Sure, we could mention the niggling incongruity of the sword carrying military escorts in a religious procession, we could quibble about the authenticty of a Mary depicted in royal blue velvet robes embroided with gold and other finery, we could question the humility of a church that processes with huge, ornate expensive looking silver crosses and silver lanterns.

But as far as sheer cultural spectacle goes, I could absolutely get down with it. I could enjoy it, marvel at it, and be thankful I´d gotten the rare opportunity to see devotion, penitence, mourning and rejoicing celebrated in this way. It is not done so anywhere else in the world as far as I am aware, so I was prepared to give over my piddling doubts and just observe, absorb and appreciate. To be sure the Leonese procession was not as moving as the intimate little Palm Sunday procession I happened on in Sahagun, but it was certainly impactful and stirring.

And finally, as if this monster of a day had not already had me doing absolutely every disparate activity one could do in a day in a foreign country, I went to hear vespers sung by the nuns at the convent that runs the albergue. We peregrinos sat in a brightly lit 18th century chapel and listened to the nuns sing, their high, soft voices filling the high vaulted space.

I was pretty wiped, but I think I could have listened to them sing all night.

Day 22 or The Gros Opa Shuffle

2008-03-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 22, March 17, Sahagun to El Burgo Ranero

It is as Rachel feared. I am stuck in a Spanish backwater. I knocked out my 18km by noon today. It is now 7:30pm and I have been sitting in the one bar in this piece of a town since 1:00pm. I know some of you (particularly Angela) are saying, ¨sitting in a bar for six and a half hours? I don´t exactly see a problem here,¨ but this bar blows chunky and this town does too. There is no internet here so I can´t even catch up on my woefully behind blogging. And there is nothing to see here in this place because this town is fugly. I mean really fugly.

This is the consequence of having looked at the map last night and deciding to save myself 4km by taking the Senda (the ¨developed¨ pilgrim trail) rather than the Calzada Romana (the continuation of the Roman road I was on the day before yesterday). I would have preferred the isolated charm of the Roman road, but I sold out and took the Senda, which landed me in this one mule town (well, 90% of these towns we pass through are pretty much one mule towns, but as I said, this one is fugly).

So I am sitting in the smoke filled bar feeling my lungs asphyxiate with every inhale and watching Spanish soaps on TV with very swarthy looking male actors and very flawlessly waxed buxom actresses. The Spanish soaps are almost entertaining. Almost. It is probably a good thing that I can´t understand a word those wretched, love sick, fabulously coiffed senoritas are saying because I´d probably ralph. As it is I can just marvel at the intensity of their tearless sobbing. I myself was so wretched that at one point I walked to the one mercado (it´s too close by to take my mule), to buy a new notebook so I could at least sit and ¨blog¨ the old fashioned way. I mean really, these days it is just rude not to provide internet.

But the good news is that I must be getting some fabulous back because a really fossilized old Spanish man at the bar bought my Fanta and sent over a little slice of bread with some jamon on it for me and then winked at me. Hey, at least I am turning heads again, even if they are solidly grey ones. Cheeky old perv.

Speaking of old men... In my family we called my Grandfather ¨Opa,¨ which is German for Grandpa. When his first great grandchild was born he became ¨Gros Opa.¨ Toward the end of his life he developed this distinct shuffle. His short legs spread wide, his knees bowed outward, his feet scooting along barely leaving the ground, with a slight limp on the left side (the result of a gimpy knee). My brother and I have decreed that my dad, who is now an Opa, definitely has the ¨Gros Opa Shuffle¨ too. And I have discovered, after three weeks of incessant trudging on my wee feet, I do too. The Camino did it to me. I shuffled into this backwater today marvelling at how, at 33, I walk like my grandfather did at 83.

Earlier in the albergue a Spanish woman saw me nursing my feet and promptly sat down on the ground in front of me, grabbed my leg, and commenced to massaging my calf using rosemary infused olive oil. ¨Ees good for de salad, but also for de legs.¨ Um. Ok. But I wasn´t going to quibble over being rubbed with salad oil; the massage felt wonderful, especially since I have been babying a pulled calf muscle for the last few days. And it turns out that she is a homeopathic physician anyway and not just some wacky person whose elevator is not servicing the top floor and likes to give complete strangers calf massages with salad dressing.

It was actually very kind of her. She asked me if I stretched everyday, before and after hiking. I said no and that I knew I should. I felt guilty like when the dental hygienist asks you if you´ve been flossing and you have to tell the truth because they can tell anyway. ¨Jou still have over 300km to go to Santiago,¨ she said warningly, like a mother. I nodded with my head down and vowed to stretch from then on.

But things looked up after Ana massaged me. The chicken I ate for dinner in the one restaurant was fall off the bone tender and homey and cozy compared to the icky drizzle outside. The bottle of red wine was made right there in this shithole backwater, amazingly, and wasn´t half bad. I sat at my table and tried to swill my wine in my glass like blue-eyed Italian Eddie taught me to do the night we went bar hoping in Logrono. His wine a perfect whirlpool of magenta in his glass. Mine only sloshed sloppily up the sides of the glass, just like it was doing now. Maybe I should practice this before I drink a half a bottle of wine.

Day 21 or Semana Santa 2008

2008-03-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 21, March 16, Terradillos de Templarios to Sahagun

Pablo and I continued the BS straight out of the albergue. Pablo started walking the Camino three years ago. No, it has not taken him that long to get halfway. Like many Spaniards, he does a week a year around spring break and will take five or so years to complete it. So Pablo had driven his car to Carrion yesterday and picked up where he left off last year when I met him. He kept tempting me with his car, ¨I khave a car, we can go to Santiago in three hours, ee jou want!¨ Punk.

¨Look! There is the albergue!¨ He shouted and pointed to the most decrepit old building, it´s half timbered and tiled roof caved in on itself. This resulted in peels of laughter. ¨No!¨ I said, ¨there is the albergue,¨ and pointed to a rusted tin can of a horse trailer abandoned on the roadside. ¨It holds 50 peregrinos.¨ More roars. Apparently there is an entire sense of humor that belongs only to the camino.

Pablo told me he had to spend a year in compulsory military service. He stood in a guard tower in the middle of bucolic Spanish countryside, like where we were walking, with a military rifle. ¨I am thinking, ´what am I doing here? Look out! There is a rabbit!´¨ He mimed aiming a rifle at the imaginary fuzzball.

It was a damn good time walking with Pablo. And he enhanced by depravity by introducing me to Oroju, a liqueur made from distilled grape skins. Tasty to be sure, but no pacharan.

But when we reached Sahagun, I decided I simply had to stop for the day. Pablo seemed genuinely sad. ¨In my country, it is tradition to geev a kiss on each cheek.¨ He said this so timidly and sweetly and followed with, ¨eef jou want, of course!¨ ¨Of course I want, Pablo! It is Spanish tradition!¨ And he paid for my tortilla and beer in the little bar we had stopped at (¨you are in my country. I pay!¨) and kissed me on each cheek and left the bar.

In the afternoon, after my shower I had to fight the urge to indulge in a siesta (I am beginning to believe this is an utterly civilized cultural tradition, mind you), but it was Domingo (Sunday) and I had to get to the pharmacia for more blister bandaids before it closed. I am glad I forced my sleepy, saggy self out the door, because in front of the albergue were about 100 people gathered, all carrying branches. And it dawned on me, today was Palm Sunday. Sure enough in the center of the throng was a statue of Jesus astride a mule anchored high on a wooden barge.

And so it was that I happened on and got completely enchanted by this somber procession of Christ on the mule through the winding streets of medieval Sahagun to the Church of San Lorenzo.

A band beat a steady thrum, thrum...thrum, thrum on drums. The barge carrying the statue and adorned with purple and peach gladiolas, was borne on the shoulders of about twenty young people, their black robes accented by boutineers of palm fronds. They swayed in unison with each step, rocking the barge from side to side as they processed to the square in front of the church.

The church of San Lorezno was built in the 1200´s, but in a different style than I have seen thus far. It is called Mudejar and is made with thousands of sun kissed thin bricks culminating in an impressive tiered bell tower.

I followed the swelling procession into the church square. I was moved, feeling the beat of the drums in my throat. The procession halted, the crescendo of drums spurring the swaying of the barge bearers. And then the crowd erupted in applause and the barge was carried into the church.

What a happy accident that I needed bandaids right then.

Later this evening I sat in the bar across from the albergue and planned my next week of the trip. Despite being more than halfway to Santiago, I am still daunted by what is ahead of me. There are two mountain ranges yet to get my butt over, one with the highest summit and another with the steepest ascent of the trip. I still seem to doubt if I can do this.

And Pablo told me about the processions during holy week in Leon and that I should try to catch at least one. Indeed I was wondering what all the posters in shop windows featuring hooded figures and advertising Semana Santa 2008 were all about. Now I realize that Semana Santa is Holy Week. Spanish people advertise their Holy Week festivities like Americans advertise movies and cell phone plans.

So I looked at the map and figured I can be in Leon by Holy Thursday and Astorga by Easter Sunday if my feet hold out and I don´t contract a mysterious case of anthrax that lays me up this week. But this means I am most definitely going to have to extend my trip, maybe by as much as a week.

When my guidebook said it is possible to do the Camino in 33 days (I originally gave myself 36), the author didn´t say that this is if you a) are in bitch-ass good shape, b) are a masochist, or c) you have something really bangin´ motivating you to go that fast, like Gerard Butler waiting to make love to you when you arrive in Santiago. Since I am, nor have, none of these things (maybe I am a masochist for undertaking this to begin with), I need more time.

Day 20 or Pablo on the Path

2008-03-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 20, March 15, Carrion de los Condes to Terradillos de Templarios

This morning the trail passed through respectably pleasant countryside and farmland. The path was lined with a bank of pussywillows, their nascent blossoms looking like thousands of tiny silvery rabbits feet, or like velvety opalescent pearls in the morning sun.

And for 12 curious kilometers the trail was on a section of the Via Trajana, the Trajan Way, a section of Roman road that connected France with Astorga (a city which seems weeks away on my journey). The road is astoundingly straight for a 2000 year old highway, and I can easily imagine horses and carts trundling down this road, roman soldiers marching, or pilgrims clad in wool cloaks making their way to Santiago.

Rain was coming; I could see it in the distance. The sky had turned that telltale color of slate. I am always enchanted by storms, except when I am walking in them, that is. But the coalescing clouds and changing light fascinate me.

I stopped on the road side for a drink and a pee and to put on my rain pants, which was smart because the soaking commenced just minutes after I had done this. And this little fit of weather brought rain and hail. And the wind gusted like it had a point to make and wasn´t going to stop until you knew what it was. I have noticed that since I am hiking from east to west, and weather generally moves from west to east, there is always, always damnit, a headwind.

But I really am a schmoe for complaining. Other than the snow in Navarette and Najera, the hail storm slogging into Burgos, and this, the weather has been abnormally and mercifully mild this winter (or so I am constantly told), so I am thinking global warming may not be soooo horrific. Okay, yes it is, but I am still enjoying whatever respite from typically frosty winters northern Spain is currently having and I hope on Budda´s belly that it continues.

It was just enough wet and cold to make me think twice about going all the way to Terradillos, though. I decided I would wimp out and stop in Ledigos once I got there. And then the rain decided it was finished with it´s little hissy, and the sun decided to come out and play a little, and that´s when I was overtaken on the trail by Pablo.

Pablo is from near Burgos, and his English is just good enough to tell jokes, which was all good. So for the last few km into the little wayside town of Caldadilla de la Cueza, we just talked bullshit. Pablo taught me to cuss in Spanish, an essential skill if ever there was one. Merda, by the way, is shit. And joder is fuck. Pablo told me he didn´t understand the difference between ¨fuck you,¨ and ¨fuck off¨ in English. I did my best to explain the subtle but crucial difference.

Pablo is a gambler. He pulled out his card with his soccer picks for this season with the zeal and fervor only a European football fan can have (but, he assured me, he was not one of those lunatic fans. Um. Ok.) If his team, Atletico Sociedad wins tomorrow, he´ll be 1,000,000 € richer! (He announced this with such hope and supplication I had to laugh). He was horrified to learn that betting on sports was illegal in the U.S. He was relieved when I told him people do it anyway.

I lamented that I had yet to try any Spanish beer on this trip, that so far my debauchery has only extended to copious amounts of red wine and pacharan. He was the right person to rectify this travesty and in Caldadilla he bought me a Mahau, my new favorite beer. But it is a total bummer that in Spain they pour your beer in an itty bitty wine glass. What the hell is that? Irish Charlie would´ve drank it and then said to the bar keep, ¨yeah, I´ll have some of that.¨ So I ordered another.

And one painkiller and two beers later, I was feeling fortified enough to make it all the way to Terradillos de Templarios (but not before we stopped in Ledigos to sample a glass of San Miguel).

I am glad I finished the day´s stage. The albergue has barrels of hot water to shower with, the dining room is charmingly decorated with the cross of the Knights Templar, the town´s namesake), I´ve run into Yentz, the German from Lake Konstance, again, and for dinner I got a whole plate of vegetables cooked in bacon fat! And tonight, at dinner, Pablo and Yentz and I toasted having achieved the official halfway point to Santiago de Compostela.

Only 396.1km (246.1 miles) to go!

Informational update

2008-03-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

I am in Terradillos de los Templarios, the official halfway mark from a kilometers walked perspective.

I am only planning on walking to Sahagun tomorrow.

XOXOX

Day 19 or I Am Really Annoying

2008-03-14T11:56:00.001-07:00

Notes on Day 19, March 14, Fromista to Carrion de los Condes

Today was just my day to be annoyed with absolutely everything. Leaving the haven at Boadilla yesterday and continuing on to Fromista in the afternoon was a mistake. Something happens during the last 5km after you´ve already hiked 20 that means the difference between being pleasantly tired from the day´s efforts and wishing like hell you could be reborn into a younger, stronger, more flexible body. Those last five transformed Corina and I from blissfully contented peregrinos to sick, hobbling, whimpering grouches by the time we got to Fromista.

And I was so looking forward to enjoying the obnoxiously perfect 11th century Iglesia de San Martin in Fromista that afternoon. I tried to let myself be awed by its harmonious proportions, its plethora of carved corbels, each one different, and it´s simple, honest interior. But I was wiped. Completely wiped.

And this morning I said goodbye to Corina. I will miss her and I hope fate or fortune or both bring us together again. She was feeling ill and decided to take a bus ahead to Mansilla where she could stay at an albergue there that is reputed to be run by some lovely Germans. I understand the longing for the comforts of the familiar. Other than the Middleberry Sisterhood, I am the only American I have met on the Camino so far. The only one. I am actually happy about that, but there are moments, however brief, when an accent from home would be heartening.

But today, about a quarter of the way out of Fromista, I encountered the next best thing: a Brit and an Aussie. Kai and Pete. And together the Triumvirate of the British Empire hiked about 10km griping about Bush, Blair, and Howard. Lamenting over environmental destruction and poor inner city diets and corporate greed. Unabashedly bitching about the war in Iraq and the infuriating ¨reasons¨ behind the whole nightmare. We exclaimed, we swore, we protested. We were sure the sheer passion and vehemence of our complaints must ensure the righteousness of our grievances. It was a grand old bitch fest I tell you. And then, at Villasirga, the wind went out of our sails. We fell silent. We were finished. We had a drink in a bar. We separated and I continued on alone.

It was fun to holler and cuss for three hours, but I found I was still in a foul mood. And continuing on alone gave me ample time to dwell and obsess on all my current annoyances. I was annoyed again with my feet. (The feet, by the way, have been better, but they never fully recovered from the punishment of the evil boots. The shooting pains in my heels have waned, but new blisters are threatening to erupt, and my arches are starting to talk back). I was annoyed that I got lost coming out of Fromista this morning because road construction had fucked with the trail markers and Extremely German Peter had to whistle at me from 200 meters away to get my oblivious ass's attention. I was annoyed with my sweat, which has soaked my pants in the general region of my ass so that I have some new chafing to enjoy. I was annoyed with the bugs, which formed a cloud around me on the trail today like Pigpen´s cloud of dirt. Jesus do I reek that bad? I guess I do. I was annoyed with the Provincial government of Palencia for ¨paving¨ this section of trail with large stone gravel instead of pulverized gravel. People, that is just mean.

And I was annoyed with my guidebook for inventing a snide little acronym for this section of the pilgrim trail, which was ¨developed¨ by the provincial government which named it the pilgrim ¨Senda¨, or road. My guidebook calls the Senda ¨soulless errors of national development agencies¨ and I was annoyed that the author had imposed his disapproving and crotchety judgement on a part of the Camino I hadn´t even experienced yet. And then, 5km later, I was annoyed to realize he was completely right. The government had ruined every last inkling of natural trail on this section of the camino. Punks.

And finally, I was annoyed with myself. Because today I came face to face with a part of myself I really do not like. When I met Kai and Pete on the trail today, I had already decided these jokers were cool. Carmel skinned Kai and Pete with the eyes like pale green sea glass. They were good looking for sure, but they were cool. And when I meet people I have already decided I think are cool, I grow, by degrees in proportion to their coolness, decidedly uncool. I immediately fall into that fawning, simpering, hang on your every word, validate your every idea, grotesque imitation of a 15 year old trying to score a party invitation from the head of the cheerleading squad. And my voice almost autonomously decides to grow about three octaves higher so that I sound like an idiot who just inhaled a balloon full of helium. How annoying is that? How is it that at 33 we can still be afflicted with spasms of inferiority complexes?

And it´s not that I want them to think I am attractive like I thought them (I realize that is pretty much a lost cause on this camino of unshaven armpits and uneven sunburn and uncombed hair), but I just wanted them to think I was cool. You know, this cool chick from the states who is out here roughing it and all that shit. Why can´t I be that nonchalant, distant but evidently sophisticated chick that could give a rat's ass if you like her or not? Which of course ensures that everyone will like her and think she´s cool and flock to her.

But then I was annoyed because that nonchalant, laissez faire, oozing cool chick is just and act too. A facade, as Corina liked to say. And the magic of the Camino is that you need no facade here. The roles we play at home, the things we think define who we are: our jobs, our hobbies, where we live, our Ikea sofa and Crate & Barrel dishes, they don´t exist here. And there is no one to judge you for what you have or have not done with your life. No one to presume if you are cool or not, and no one who really cares. Because here those labels are meaningless.

And so I arrived in Carrion de los Condes a little grumpy, a little self pitying, and not very pleasant. So it was probably a blessing that no other pilgrims I knew were in the albergue in the 13th century monastery.

But I am glad I had a chance to meet this ¨person¨ that I can sometimes be on the camino today. Because she is not me. And maybe I can say goodbye to her here too.

Day 18 or Living Like God in France

2008-03-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 18, March 13th, Castrojeriz to Fromista

Despite the charmed quaintness of our albergue last night, it was fucking freezing in there. In fact, most albergues lack heat. Even when there is a radiator in the room, it is not on (either because it is broken or because some Ebeneezer Scrooge is withholding the heat). You get into the albergue, see the radiator, thank God and the saints that there is going to be heat for the night, and then walk up to it with your eager hands outstretched... and nada. Zip, zilch, niente.

And this brings me to my latest stupid ass decision regarding gear: my girl Angela offered me her sub-zero, Antarctica tested, Himalayas approved supper cozy warm sleeping bag before I left. But my dumbass was all, ¨Naw, naw, naw. I have to travel light! I´m getting this special lightweight Rick Steves ´sleep sac´.¨ The "sleep sac" is basically two pieces of muslin sewn together - smart.

¨I´ll take your little travel pillow though.¨

So my ignorant ass has been saved by the fact that so far, each albergue has had extra blankets, heavy wool (even if stinky) ones too. And I pile about 18 of them on top of my special sheet to keep from imitating a frozen fish fillet while I watch the other peregrinos in their snugly warm, micro stretch, space fiber sleeping bags. What was I thinking? I was coming to Spain for fuck´s sake. And in winter!

But even with the blankets it is still balls cold in the mornings and I finally figured out why they withhold the heat in the albergues. It´s so you can´t wait to get the fuck out of there in the morning.

But Corina and I moved slowly today and it was 9:00 before we left. Corina had to take a laxative poor girl. I don´t blame her. Veg is still mysteriously difficult to come by. And when we did get on the road we had to stop at the Oficina del Correo (Post office), to mail my recently deemed useless gear to Santiago. We had the guy weigh it and it was two kilograms. It doesn´t sound like much, but believe me, it is a lot. You feel every extra feather you are carrying.

Corina and I walked again together today. We talked about some heavy stuff (her father´s cheating on her mother and its affects on the family), fun things like our shared joy of cooking, and silly things like our mutual obsession with peanut butter (she acquired hers in the states when she was an exchange student). I told her about the oral orgasm in a carton that is Peanut Butter N Chip ice cream and we squealed over Reese´s Peanut Butter cups. I told her my last name and she fawned over the cuteness of its meaning: ¨little cow."

I realized I have no real idea what is going on in the world. I don´t know much about the outcome of the Clinton-Obama primary in early March. More importantly, I don´t know who one Project Runway. I think I have a $700 credit card bill that is overdue somewhere. But this place is so removed from ´real life´, none of it seems to matter here.

We played leap frog with the intensely German Peter and Mattias today. Corina was reminded of the German fable of the rabbit and the porcupine. The porcupine races the rabbit and won by having his wife (who looks just like him), switch places with him and meet the rabbit at each successive destination in the race. ¨It´s quite a sad tale really,¨ Corina said. ¨The Rabbit goes mad because he can´t understand how the porcupine is beating him and then the Rabbit dies.¨ I burst out laughing. ¨Why to all German fairytales have these completely wretched endings?¨ I thought she was going to tell me the German version of the Rabbit and the Hare, but no.

Corina laughed and we joked about the general grotesqueness that is the compendium of German children´s stories. In Cinderella, the step sisters cut off their heels and toes and blood soaks the fabled slipper. Corina told me of the Struwel Peter tales (I think I remember my dad mentioning these once). The Slovenly Peter stories include such dire warnings as little boys who starve to death because they refuse to eat their soup and the like. Corina thinks they are positively brutal.

And in the afternoon we stopped in Boadillo to visit the Albergue which had a cafe. We entered through an archway in an old wall and found a secret sanctuary tucked away. It was a lovely garden in a sunny high walled courtyard with mini grass and stone statues and blossoming cherry trees. The hostess made us delicious fresh bocadillos de tortilla (tortilla sandwiches) and we sat in the sunny courtyard eating our lunch. Corina says there is a saying in German: ¨Leben wie Gott in Frankreich.¨ Living with God in France. It means the same thing as La Dolce Vita, the sweet life, or the good life. Corina has no idea why the maxim references France of all places, but so it does.

She sat on an old wooden bench and leaned back against the warm yellow stucco garden wall. I sprawled out on the spongy grass and absorbed the light and the heat. And here we were basking in the warm afternoon sun, in Boadilla, Spain, living like God in France.

Day 17 or High on the Meseta

2008-03-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 17, March 12th, Hornillos del Camino to Castrojeriz

Last night in the albergue, over some shared wine, Corina and I agreed we should walk together today. She and another German, Hans, are from near Munster, Germany. ¨Ah, the cheese!¨ I said. ¨No, not the cheese.¨ Apparently my much beloved German cheese comes from America.

So Corina and I walked together and gabbed all morning long and by 10:30 we were already halfway to Castrojeriz and sitting comfortably in a bar having a cafe con leche and tortilla. (By the way, tortilla in Spain is nothing like a tortilla in the states. It is basically an egg omelette, sometimes with potatos, sometimes with ham, but always pretty tasty. I finally put two and two together that a tortilla sandwich comprised my carb-bomb lunch a few days back.

Corina and I chatted about our love lives, (my ex-it, her ex-boyfriend, her new boyfriend), we yakked about religion and its hypocrisies (apparently she is taxed to support the Catholic church in Germany). We philosophized about being alone and being lonely and the difference between the two, and we covered all this conversational territory as we hiked through the most splendid scenic territory I´ve seen since Navarra.

Both yesterday and today the trail took us out onto a Meseta, a high sierra or plateau of considerable elevation (950m at the highest point). And all yesterday and today the trail flowed gloriously through this shadeless haven of wind and birds and Spanish Big Sky Country.

And the time spent with Corina flowed by effortlessly by too. Soon enough we were passing through the arches of the ruined gothic monastery just outside of Castrojeriz.

Castrojeriz is a great town in the valley below the Meseta. Its medieval winding streets cling to the base of a substantial and steep hill on the top of which sits a ruined castillo of pretty impressive proportions. At first I looked at the climb and then looked at Corina and shook my head. The spirit was willing but the feet were weak. But later after a rest in the albergue, Hans convinced Corina and I to suck it up and climb.

I spent the entire 25 minute climb, between fits of panting, marvelling at how someone could have built something on this crazy mini-Matterhorn 1000 years ago. And when I reached the base of the castillo (Hans was already at the top of the thing waving down to me, I could see why they did. You had the most vast and panoramic 360º views in all directions. Any village idiot could have seen the enemy coming from miles away.

And from way up on the castillo ramparts you could also look back over the vast meseta down from which we had just come. It is like a mountain range with the tops just sheered clean off 1/3 of the way up. It was crazy and inspiring and Hans turned to me and said ¨Look where we are!¨

The albergue was in the home of a cute young ex-Pamplonan who despised city life and moved here to live at a slower pace. And the foundations of his home are just as 12th century as the iglesia directly across the street. The house was a wacky affair. He had randomly inlaid bits of colorful Spanish tile and jewel toned stones in the floor, he had painted the patches of plaster in between the warped half timbering in shades of pale yellow and sky blue so that the walls looked like a patchwork quilt, the lighting and numerous repairs had been completley jerry-rigged with whatever materials were on hand.

I was torn between feeling like it was an utter architectural travesty and completley adorable. In the end, adorable won out. It was homey, welcoming, and his sitting room had these crazy heavy antique carved oak chairs and settee that were geometric and exhilarating. I would have stolen them if they would´ve fit into my rucksack.

And in the evening Corina, who is a lot more gear savvy than I am, helped me make and honest accounting of the necessity of everything in my rucksack. It was, truth be told, still too heavy. I held up each item for her approval. Fingernail clippers? ¨I don´t have this, why do you?¨ OK, clippers: gone. Washcloth? ¨I have only one towel, no washcloth.¨ Washcloth: gone. Photocopies of pages from other Spain guidebook? ¨You can read it later.¨ Photocopies: gone.¨ Deodorant? At first I thought really, what is the point? Applying deodorant to try and mitigate the wave of malodorous funk coming from my armpits is like trying to drain a swimming pool with a teaspoon. Utterly futile. But then I sniffed my pits again and thought every little bit helps. Deodorant: keep.

And I slept soundly in the knowledge that tomorrow I would mail more deadly kilograms ahead of me to Santiago.

Day 16 or Huelgas Reales Found

2008-03-13T11:43:00.000-07:00

Notes on day 16, March 11th, Burgos to Hornillos del Camino

I was not in a hurry to leave my hotel this morning. I stopped at the Cathedral for a last, lingering, incredulous look, and when I finally did hit the grassy trail leading out of Burgos, I met up with some of the Germans. Corina and I began chatting immediately, falling effortlessly into conversation just like we did the night before. But when we reached the end of the park, the Germans turned right, and I turned left.

There was a monastery I wanted to see, and after missing the one at Cenas I thought I would double my efforts to find this one. My guidebook is on my naughty list right now for giving utterly vague directions that got me lost when the monastery was really pathetically easy to find, and I gained an extra 2 km out of the misdirected hunt, thank you Mr. guidebook author, sir.

It is the Monasterio de las Huelgas Reales in a small village outside of Burgos. I entered under the medieval archway and for twenty enchanting and sneaky minutes I poked around undetected and took pictures. But when I tried to squeak through a closed gate, a security guard stopped me. I apologized for my snooping and asked him if the monastery was in fact closed. He told me to wait 15 minutes and it would open.

So I waited, and when it finally did open, I was the only tourist on this expansive campus, and check this: I scored a private tour! :) And check this: it was in Spanish. :( But Ana, my tour guide, spoke slowly enough and used enough hand gestures that I actually followed her pretty decently. See, these past two weeks in Spain I have been collecting Spanish words like a bee gathers nectar, a little bit here, a little bit there. Sweet morsels of understanding. And so when Ana explained to me about the batalla (battle) of Toledo, the Mozarabic parts of the monastery that were from the Siglo doce (twelfth century), and the Christian Romanesque bits that were from the Siglo trece (thirteenth century), I understood! Once again, I am a badass.

The 12th century cloister was sublime. It was a teensy affair, with delicate double columned arches. Each capital was carved differently but just as intricately as the last. It is officially my favorite cloister in all of Spain thus far, and all I wanted to do was sit and read a romance novel or some transcendentalist poetry in its grassy center.

The collection of tombs in the three naves was straight out of a scene from Lord of the Rings (I don´t remember if there was a scene with a bunch of tombs in that movie, but if there was, I am sure it would´ve looked like this).

The monastery also contains a medieval fabrics museum. I swoon over antique garments people, and these were the oldest I have ever seen. The funerary garments of Eleanor of Angleterre from 1244 were on display, and I had trouble containing myself. The oldest dress I had ever seen was the silver tissue court dress from the 1570´s at the costume museum in Bath, England. But these clothes were 300 years older, phenomenal, rare, and evocative.

In all I spent two hours at the monastery with Ana, which meant I was getting a very late start on the road, but Huelgas Reales was such a divine place, a living monastery with such out of contrl treasures, and so beautifully preserved, that I could not help but be completely adrenalized for the rest of my hike. And I thought how fateful it was that I missed the detour to the monastery at Cenas, and how fortunate it was that I found this one instead.

And later on the trail ran through a little village where I stopped in a little shop for some groceries and supplies, and I exercised my vocabulary even more by pointing to the fruits and vegetables I wanted and naming them like an eager first year Spanish student. The shop keeper asked me where I was from (Estados Unitos), which state, and how close Georgia was to where Hurricane Katrina hit. She asked me if I was alone (solamente) on the Camino and when I said si, she looked surprised. I didn´t know how to say I got divorced in Spanish so I mimed taking a ring off my left hand and chucking it in the trash. ¨Ahhhhh,¨ she said as realization dawned and she laughed. ¨Buen Camino!¨ she called as I took my leave.

And in the evening when I reached the albergue (which was less than 10 meters from the 14th century iglesia), in Hornillos del Camino, the gaggle of Germans had already settled in and begun their binge drinking. The common room was an absolute Oktoberfest. Peter, who wears suspenders that are so reminiscent of lederhosen he might as well be wearing them, is soooo German he is almost a caracature of a German. He speaks English the way you would speak English if you were making fun of a German speaking English. And he speaks German that way too. He pronounces his vowel sounds with that swooping, over-the-top musicality, and he punches his consonants with oooompf. He and some Korean guy I have not seen before and can only describe as an utter spaz spent the evening singing Stevie Wonder and Fleetwood Mac songs. I guess it just goes to prove that you can take the man out of the beer hall, but you can´t take the beer hall out of the man.

I stepped outside to call family, and the wind was warm and the night sky was covered with stars and high blue-grey clouds. I sat alone for a while on the church square overlooking the town and the countryside and listened to the laughter and singing from the Germans inside the ancient albergue. ¨Look where I am,¨ I thought. ¨Look where I am.¨

Day 15 or A Gaggle of Germans

2008-03-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Notes on my day in Burgos, March 10

So I added up my mileage, and my "kilometerage" so far and my little purple pies (feet) have walked 179.9 miles or 289.6km. I am a badass.

This morning I checked myself into a little hotel only a few blocks from the Cathedral as soon as I left the Albergue at 7:30 in the morning. I swear the rules in some of these Albergues (your ass gets locked in at 9:30pm, your ass gets kicked out by 7:30am) are positivly draconian. When I was happily ensconced in my private haven I crashed for another two hours. The Cathedral didn´t open until 10:00 anyway, and I planned to start my day there.

And it is such a glorious thing to be without my pack for a whole day and in my other pair of shoes. I feel so blissfully light, even with the two pastries I ate for breakfast. In a cafe in my hood I was enjoying my desayuno of pastry and cafe, when in walked German Andre and tattooey French Veronique. I had not seen them for a few days and assumed they were probably in Fromista by now. They sat down to join me and then Veronique leaned over the table, all conspiratorial like, and asked me if I had seen Carlos the Argentine lately, and when I told her that he had left the albergue this morning (but without saying goodbye to me), she raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows and looked knowingly at Andre. ¨I sink ee ees in love wiz mee or somezing, because ee waz very nice at furst, tres sympathetique, you know? But zen ee ees changing and I sink eet ees because ee does not like to see mee and Andre so much togezzer, you know?¨ Ahh. Another episode of As The Camino Turns.

And after the drama-rama over Carlos was pondered and pronounced positively inexplicable, I left the two petite amis and headed for the Cathedral.

First let me just get this off my chest. How sacreligious is it to say ¨Holy Fuck¨ about a church? I mean really? Sometimes nothing else gets the job done but Holy Fuck, and this is one of those times.

Every inch of every surface, be it wood, stone, or metal, is elaborately carved. And each motif, and there must be thousands of motifs covering this place, is symbolic. I could have spent a week in there. The sepulchures, sarcophogi, and tombs were carved right down to the marble threads on the marble tassles of the marble pillows on which the marble effigies rested their marble heads. There was a collection of gold and silver chalices (caliz) that blew me away for the sheer minuteness of their intricacies. The most mundane door to the most mundane room in the cathedral was adorned with carvings like it was the entrance to heaven itself. One has the feeling it would take a lifetime to know this place intimately.

Its architecture is mostly Gothic and Renaissance. And the famous El Cid and his wife are buried there, but I was so busy looking up at The Crossing (the glorious Renaissance dome that replaced the collapsed Gothic spire in the central nave) that I fogot to notice I was standing right next his dead self.

But the building is as much a political statement as a religious one, and I don´t feel it is a spiritual place as much as a museum, so saying ¨holy fuck¨ about a museum is not quite as damning I suppose.

It was a blustery day, a good day to spend a lot of time indoors, and for lunch (comida) I stopped in a little restaurant and ordered more paella and some vino tinto (big surprise there), and my very good looking Spanish waiter brought me a whole bottle. And why shouldn´t one drink an entire bottle of lovely red, produced and bottled right there in Burgos, at 2:00 in the afternoon on a cold and drizzly day in early March? That´s exactly what I thought too, so I made a good stab at it. I sat at my little table and nursed my wine and wrote notes on the day for my blog (at one point I scrawled: ¨can´t write. very drunk.¨).

About eight nights ago Elena and I had a discussion about American movie stars after a hospitalero in an albergue showed the movie Seven on a large screen. I asked her if she thought Brad Pitt was cute. ¨Ci, muy guapo,¨ she answered. So embolded by my 3/5 of a bottle of wine I decided it would be a great idea to tell my waiter he was muy guapo. I am sure he thought, ¨Madre mia, what is this pudgy, sunburned, limping American woman doing hitting on me?¨ But Graciously he took pity on me and only said, ¨Gracias."

After comida I returned to my hotel for siesta, and this time it really was a pleasant little afternoon nap instead of an exhausted and desperate bid for unconsciousness. And after siesta I went out window shopping in the old town, and ran into Stephanie from Friebourg, who I had to leave behind in Santo Domingo because her knees were shot. She inivted me to dinner with her and some friends and that´s when I learned that the enitre country of Germany has emptied of citizens and the Krauts have invaded the Camino.

It was a postive gaggle of Germans. Sacha, who played that twangly little mouth instrument that you pluck with your finger, Eva, whose pack is an astonishing 21 kilograms owing to her 7 month old son who she is carrying on her back, and the sweet and lithe Corina, who got soaked in the rain today and had to keep borrowing spare pants from others and changed them five times. There were about 10 Germans in all.

It turns out a popular German actor wrote a best selling camino memoir called ¨I´m On My Way,¨ and it seems to have hit a nerve there and the camino has lurched into the collective awareness of the German population.

I guess I can´t really blame them. I´m on my way too.

Day 14 or Burgos or Bust

2008-03-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 14, March 9th, Ages to Burgos

Today´s mission was simply to make it to Burgos. I had to leave the Middleberry Crew behind today, or rather they had to leave me behind as they were taking a bus to Burgos to see the Cathedral before heading back to Madrid. Lucky bastards.

In the morning we hovered around the bar in the Albergue while Anna Maria, our solicitous hostess, made each of us a crazy good breakfast of fresh squeezed orange juice, cafe con leche and toast topped with grated red tomato, fruity green Spanish olive oil and salt. I watched hungrily as she made my toast and Anna Maria muttered something in Spanish. I turned to Ally (I constantly and annoyingly looked desperately to her for translations) and asked her what Anna Maria said and waited for some enlightened morsel of Spanish wisdom. ¨She says that the way you are looking at her makes her think if she doesn´t give you your toast immediately you will eat her.¨ Oh. So instead of getting wisdom, I was affectionately chided for not hiding my obvious impatience for my savory looking breakfast.

But then she did offer a little Spanish wisdom, and Ally translated for me. ¨She says that her philosophy of life is that on The Camino, you have to learn to give, but you also have to learn to receive.¨ And with that Anna Maria bid me Buen Camino with a hearty kiss on each cheek and a strong hug before she sent me trundling with my pack out the door and on to Burgos.

A few days ago on the trail I met a German couple who told me of a lovely albergue in Granon and that I should try to break my journey there and experience the home cooking and the tranquil setting. When it didn´t work out for me to stay in Granon, I tried to make myself feel better by thinking I didn´t come to see the albergues anyway. I came to see the landscape and the art and architecture of Spain dammit! But after Ana Maria, and after I reflect on the family dinners I´ve had in the evenings at the albergues, the people I´ve met (the fearless Adrienne, Elena who helped me score great shoes, Veronique with the tattoos), and the conversations I´ve had (in all combinations of Franglais, Spanglish, and Franspang), I realize the albergues are just as much a part of the Camino experience as the landscape and the architecture and the blisters.

Mid-morning I passed the village of Atapuerca where apparently all of us who are of European decent come from. The party began 800,000 years ago with the first Europeans, who happened to be cannibals. Hmmm. We´ve come a long way since then. Or maybe we haven´t.

Then it began. The long, merciless, unrelenting 8km SLOG into Burgos via ugly industrial suburbs and on feet punishing pavement. I tell you it never ended. I had visions of ending it all after 2 and a half hours. I mean really people, I would have lost nothing if I had just said ¨fuck it¨ and taken the damn bus. But my guidebook was written by a tyrannical purist, and he has this way of making you feel guilty if you ¨cheat¨, and I succumbed to the emotional blackmail and walked. I am a total moron.

And there was this one dark lumpy cloud following me into Burgos. It was bizarre cuz everywhere else the sky was sunny and blue and the clouds white and fluffy. No, I just had my own personal cloud here, which all of the sudden decided to pelt me with pea-sized hail for twenty minutes. It was fucked up. I wasn´t that cold, I didn´t even get wet, just poked by this obnoxious hail storm that seemed to belong only to me.

And then I saw it. Beckoning me onwards like and oasis in a desert, I turned a corner and saw the spires of the cathedral. And I felt its call and steeled myself to continue on.

But it seemed like no matter how long I walked, the Cathedral was not getting any closer. Was it a mirage? a cruel joke of a vision after this wretched 8km Bataan death march on evil blacktop and sickeningly cutely patterned sidewalks? And then I saw it. Beckoning me onwards, I looked up at the sign and turned into Pizza Hut.

People, it had to be done. I could not walk another step on that pavement and each neighborhood joint I passed was crowded with people taking their afternoon drink and having their afternoon smoke, and there was no one in Pizza Hut (go figure), and so I knew I could take off my stinking shoes and order a pizza and a Pepsi and rest my weary meaty bones for a minute and breathe pizza scented air instead of Marlborough scented air.

And it was enough. After my grateful respite in the surprising oasis that is Pizza Hut, I marched on towards the cathedral, and when I reached it I knew I had found the true oasis. I really cannot describe its beauty and I will not really try until tomorrow, after I have seen the guts of the thing.

I found the albergue in the city center, and while I showered and changed and got my bunk ready for later that night, I (and the rest of the peregrinos in the dormitory), were serenaded by our hospitalero who played a Spanish guitar (covered with Snoopy stickers) and sang. It was the haunting, sepia colored guitar music of the Spanish plains, and I imbibed the sounds like glass of smooth sepia colored liqueur.

And I ate dinner at a little restaurant with Colin Firth´s younger and slightly less attractive Polish brother Iwo (pronounced Ivo). He was starting his camino here in Burgos and met up with a friend (Tomas - whom I´d already met in Najera) and will continue with him tomorrow. The Sangria flowed, as did the conversation about Russian atrocities during WWII, American Civil War reenactments, the fact that Tomas had been to Indiana and was fascinated by it, and the mystery of missing toilet seats in Spain. (I kid you not. In several of the Albergues there have been no toilet seats.) And while I decided I did not come to Spain to man hunt, I have to admit I am a wee bit disappointed this evening that Iwo will be going on to the next town tomorrow while I am staying in Burgos for the day. Cést la Vie.

But the good news is, this little trooper made it to Burgos!

Day 13 or The Return to Fat Pants

2008-03-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

Notes on Day 13, March 8th, Belorado to Ages

Morning is definitely my favorite time to walk. The clouds in the early hours are so high and luminous, with voluminous grey underbellies. The light slices through from above, making its way to the vineyards. I think that the vineyards must be a sight to see in the autumn, their vines tied carefully in uniform espaliers and heavy with fruit.

It is good to be back in the higher elevations again too. Today and tomorrow are climb days. The views of the mountains are spectacular from up here.

And either I´ve finally gotten used to the weight of my pack or this heifer has lost a little weight! I may even fit back into my fat jeans when I get home! Notice I said fat jeans, not skinny jeans. No, I am still several caminos away from my skinny jeans. See, there comes a point at which as a woman is gaining weight and she can no longer fit into each successively larger size of jeans, that she has a mental 404 and simply refuses to buy the next size up. From this point on the only pants she buys are black sweat pants.

Last fall my sister-in-law took me shopping for jeans. MaryLynn is, for all intents and purposes, my sister. I don´t have one, and I always wanted one, and for that I can only blame my parents. And no offense to my brother, whom I adore, but I doubt a sister would have gotten the bright idea to ¨play Houdini¨ and tie me up in a Star Wars sleeping bag and stuff me in a linen closet at the ripe old age of 6 to see if I could escape. (I did not try to escape; I sat inside that sleeping bag inside that closet and cried and screamed like my fingernails were being torn off).

Anyway, MaryLynn said to me, ¨Keke, I´m taking you shopping. You need to look good now so you feel good now.¨ I guess she must´ve noticed the muffin tops bulging from my hips and the belly bun overlapping the belt buckle on my low rise jeans which I had no business wearing. There was a veritable bakery around my midsection. So she took pity on me and whisked me to Old Navy, the first resort store for cheap but reasonably stylish defcon 1 emergency clothes. And the jeans we bought that day (my fat jeans) definitely bought me a few more months until I eventually exploded out of those and they too were given over for the black sweats.

It was a simple thing for her to do really, take me shopping. But she took me at a time when my depression was still so dimming that I don´t think I could´ve bought a pair of socks for myself. Well, maybe a pair of black sweat pants. But I was so grateful for her at the time. She made it possible for me to go outside without feeling like a completely obese sprocket, and for that I am so thankful to her.

So yes, I think I may even get back into those Old Navy denims again when I get home, and that will feel good. That is unless I keep diving into pastelerias (pastry shops) like they were going extinct.

I am also the MASTER!!!...of peeing outdoors. After the fifth time I´ve gotten the hang of this. See, being able to pee comfortably outdoors entails being a good location scout. ¨Location, location, location,¨ as they say in real estate. Is there a nice wide rock for you to plop your wide ass on and hang it off the back? Even better, is there another rock or tree nearby to help brace yourself? Is the spot relatively private? Meaning the N-120 highway is at least 200 meters away and none of your other peregrino friends were close behind you on the trail? People, I am learning skilllzzz on this Camino I tell ya.

This afternoon Stinky Julie, Ally and Adrienne caught up with me on the trail and we chatted about their classes, their travels, their post graduation plans. But then somehow we got on the subject of peeing outdoors and I mentioned that I had gotten quite good at it and was a little proud of my skill level when Adrienne promptly announced, ¨Peeing? Hell I just took a dump back there. Hey, it had to be done.¨

And suddenly I felt (and I was surprised to feel this), sheer admiration for her. People, that takes balls!

The Albergue in Ages was a lovey affair. Carlos joined myself and the Middleberry Sisterhood for a home cooked meal of the most lovely garlic soup and tangy pisto (vegetable ragu) for dinner. We talked Camino and feet (Pok made the rounds of feet examinations at dinner), we joked and laughed and drank while Ana Maria, our robust hostess, kept the supply of fresh bread and sangria flowing.

And to boot, Pok looked at one of my big toes last night and pronounced them to be ¨diminishing,¨ meaning healing. The bleeding in the nail bed has subsided and the intense purple has calmed to a lovely magenta if I do say. I asked Pok if he thought my toenails would fall off my big toes. I like how Pok calls it the great toe instead of the big toe. He said no, he didn´t think so. Thank God because I think a nail-less toe would gross me out more than the some of the toilets I´ve seen lately.